When it comes to the health of you and your family, unexpected or long-term hospitalizations should not be a time to worry about medical costs. Hospital indemnity insurance helps by putting recovery first over hospital bills.

Hospital indemnity insurance supplements your existing health insurance coverage by helping pay expenses for hospital stays. Depending on the plan, hospital indemnity insurance gives you cash payments to help you pay for the added expenses that may come while you recover. Typically plans pay based on the number of days of hospitalization.

Even if your medical insurance covers most of your hospitalization, you can still receive payments from your hospital indemnity insurance plan for extra expenses while recovering.

You pay monthly premiums for your hospital indemnity insurance plan. If you are admitted to the hospital for an injury or illness, your hospital indemnity plan makes cash payments to you.

And with the payments going directly to you, you can use these emergency funds to pay for costs not covered by your health insurance, health insurance deductibles, copays and coinsurance, childcare expenses while you are in the hospital, or cost-of-living expenses as you recover.

For most plans there are no deductibles and you are not limited to provider networks.