Accidental Insurance

If you’re hurt in a covered accident, accident insurance might help in covering the gaps between what your health insurance covers and any out-of-pocket expenses you might incur. Fixed benefit amounts might be paid for covered care and treatment that result from a covered accident on top of what your health insurance pays. Accident coverage is often seen as a rider to a health insurance policy. The usual and customary benefits of an accident insurance plan include:

Emergency care
Hospital care
Follow up care
Accidental dismemberment
Accidental death

An accident cannot be deliberately caused. It must be unintentional and not designed. Intentionally driving a car into a telephone pole isn’t an accident. Losing control of that car on a patch of ice and colliding with that same telephone pole might constitute an accident under the policy.

Just about anybody can buy accident coverage, but it’s often provided as a component of an employer’s insurance plan. Many employers provide the basic accident plan, and should they choose to do so, employees can upgrade from that. Premiums are less expensive than life insurance because the risk of dying in an accident is significantly less than other causes.

Benefits of accident plans are ordinarily paid out consistent with the severity of an injury. For example, restrictions of specific fractional amounts might limit how much will be paid out for the accidental loss of an extremity. Should the insured person die in an accident, their named beneficiary in the policy will receive the death benefit regardless of any other insurance that the decedent might have had. Some policies might require the loss of two extremities. The death must occur within a specific period of time after the accident. An illness isn’t an accident, so death by an illness is excluded. Death by suicide or overdose from drugs or alcohol are also excluded.

You might have accident coverage through your employer and not even know it. Check our your benefits package and health coverage. You may want to build on what you have.