Coverage for unexpected employee medical events
UnitedHealthcare Benefit Ally® helps support employees’ financial wellness with automatic payments that may help ease stress from unexpected medical events.
Nearly 1 in 4 Americans don’t have any emergency savings,1 which means they don’t have a financial cushion in the event of an unexpected medical emergency.
Providing fully insured and self-funded groups of 100+ employees with financial support when an unexpected medical event occurs, UnitedHealthcare Benefit Ally®2 combines supplemental health benefits — Accident Protection Plan (APP), Critical Illness Protection Plan (CIPP) and Hospital Indemnity Protection Plan (HIPP) — with medical benefits.
Learn how UnitedHealthcare Benefit Ally works
When an eligible medical event is identified that qualifies for an additional payment under any of the supplemental health plans, a benefit check is automatically sent to the employee, which employees may use however they choose — from household bills to medical copays or groceries.
Payouts vary by event type:3
| Accident Protection | Hospital Indemnity |
Critical Illness | |
| Covered medical events | Emergency care, dislocations and fractures | Hospital admissions, ICU and hospital stays | Cancer, heart attacks, strokes |
| Number of members paid | 5,303 | 1,636 | 183 |
| Average benefit amount | $240 |
$855 | $3,106 |
| Total benefit amount | $1,275,580 | $1,402,400 | $568,550 |
Offering employees a simpler experience
In addition to financial protection, Benefit Ally offers a simpler experience for both employers and employees.
Employers: Benefit Ally streamlines the administrative process by bundling existing supplemental health products with medical plans and offering them as a single package, such as within a single quote or invoice.
Employees: Benefit Ally simplifies the employee experience by automating the claims payment of supplemental health benefits, so the employee automatically receives a supplemental health benefit check when a qualifying event or diagnosis is identified.
Employees consistently rated Benefit Ally highly — significantly above typical health plan benchmarks. In 2024 surveys, 68% of respondents reported satisfaction, with 39% having indicated the benefit helped them in a time of need.4
Providing reduced costs in a time of need
Benefit Ally is available as 2 different packages: Benefit Ally – Value and Benefit Ally – Enhanced. While the supplemental health benefits covered in each package are identical, the payouts differ – but they both work to reduce costs for employers and employees. For example:
- Benefit Ally – Value: Pays the employee $3,000 for a cancer diagnosis
- Benefit Ally – Enhanced: Pays the employee $4,000 for a cancer diagnosis
This higher payout level applies across all covered events in the Enhanced package, providing greater financial protection when employees need it most.
Typically, Benefit Ally adds just 1-3% to a fully insured medical premium — about $10.75 per member per month (PMPM) for Value or $15.09 for Enhanced.2 Employers may choose pre- or post-tax premium structures during setup, depending on their payroll and benefits strategy.
Since launching in late 2020, Benefit Ally has grown to more than 300 client groups and 75,000 members across 48 states and Washington, D.C., with a 25% growth in enrollment in 2024 alone.3 The program also paid out $3.2M in supplemental benefits that year, contributing to a total of $10.8M in distributed payouts.3
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