Free Air Ambulance With Qualifying Insurance

We verify your benefits, document the medical necessity, and bill your insurer. If your plan qualifies, the flight costs you nothing out of pocket. We tell you which it is before you commit to anything.

Can an air ambulance really be free?

For a great many patients, yes. Air ambulance is a covered medical benefit under most commercial health plans, under federal and state employee plans, and under TRICARE. When the plan covers it and the transport is medically necessary, the insurer pays the provider and the patient pays nothing. That is not a promotion. It is how the benefit is designed to work.

The reason so few families ever see it work that way is sequence. Most people arrange the flight first and submit the claim afterwards. By then the patient has already moved, the plan has no reason to agree the flight was necessary, and the family is left holding an invoice and an appeal. Done in the right order, the same flight is authorized in advance and paid in full.

Our job is to run that sequence for you. It costs you nothing to find out where you stand.

How it works: verify, document, fly

1. We verify your benefits, at no charge

Send us a photo of the insurance card, front and back, the patient name and the hospital they are in. Our insurance team reads the policy and calls the plan directly. You get a straight answer on what the plan covers, whether prior authorization is required, and whether you would owe anything at all. There is no charge for this and no obligation to fly with us afterwards.

2. We document medical necessity

This is the step that decides the claim, and it is the step most operators skip. We work with the treating physician to document why ground transport or a commercial flight is not clinically appropriate for this patient, and we submit that to the plan together with the receiving facility acceptance, the flight plan and the medical crew configuration. We obtain an authorization number before the aircraft is released.

3. We fly, and we bill the insurer

With a signed assignment of benefits the claim goes to the plan, not to you. We carry it from submission through to payment, including the appeals if the plan pushes back, at no additional cost to you. You deal with your relative. We deal with the insurer.

Which insurance qualifies

Commercial and employer-sponsored plans

Blue Cross Blue Shield, Anthem, Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, Humana and Kaiser Permanente all cover medically necessary air ambulance transport under most of their plans. Employees of large corporations tend to have the strongest benefits, because large self-funded plans are written broadly and administered by the carrier rather than capped by it.

Federal and state employee plans

FEHB plans, state employee plans and the large teacher plans have, in our experience, the broadest air ambulance benefits of any category, including for transport back from abroad. If the patient is a teacher, a state or federal employee, or a public safety worker, say so on the first call. It usually changes the answer on cost.

TRICARE

TRICARE covers medically necessary air transport. Authorization is routed through the regional contractor, or overseas through the TRICARE Overseas Program, rather than through the treating hospital, so that call needs to be made early.

Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser is a closed system, so the question is rarely whether air ambulance is covered but whether Kaiser authorized it. Emergency transport out of a region where Kaiser has no facility is commonly approved. A non-emergent transfer needs prior authorization from the regional authorization or outside-services department, and a member taken ill abroad should open a case with Kaiser away-from-home support at the same time, because the authorization attaches to that case number.

What does not qualify: Medicare and Medicaid

Neither Medicare nor Medicaid pays for transport across an international border. We would rather you know that in the first five minutes than discover it after the flight. Medicare Part B does cover air ambulance within the United States. Some Medicare Advantage plans add a foreign emergency benefit that original Medicare does not, so if the patient has an Advantage plan it is worth letting us read the plan documents before you assume anything.

What "free" means here, precisely

It means no out-of-pocket cost to the patient or the family for the transport: the insurer pays and we do not send you a balance. What it depends on is the plan and the clinical picture, which is exactly why we verify both before anyone commits. Some plans apply a deductible or coinsurance to air ambulance; where that happens we tell you the number in advance rather than letting it arrive in the post.

And if your plan will not cover the transport, we say so immediately and quote you a fixed, all-inclusive price instead: aircraft, crew, medical team, equipment, ground ambulance at both ends, landing and handling fees. One number, agreed in writing, no post-flight invoice for extras.

We also secure the US hospital bed and the accepting physician

The aircraft is the easy part. The hard part, when a relative is in a hospital abroad, is finding a hospital in the United States that will accept the patient and a physician there who will take over the care. Without those two things there is nowhere for the flight to land, and no amount of insurance coverage helps.

We arrange all of it. Our mission coordinators work the receiving side: we identify the appropriate facility, secure the bed, and obtain the accepting physician, then we build the transport around that confirmation. In most of the countries we serve we can secure a receiving hospital bed directly, because we hold those relationships and the ground ambulance capability ourselves rather than subcontracting them.

Where we fly from

Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America into the United States, and worldwide beyond that. Our aircraft and crews are based in the region rather than dispatched to it, which is why our departure windows are measured in hours. For a US citizen taken ill in Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos, Mexico City, the Dominican Republic or Jamaica, we are usually the closest critical care aircraft to the patient.

What to send us right now

Call us, or send these four things and we will come back to you with a coverage answer:

1. A photo of the insurance card, front and back.
2. The patient name, date of birth and the hospital they are in.
3. A short description of the medical situation, or the treating physician name and contact.
4. A passport photo if you have one. If there is no passport, say so — it is rarely the obstacle people expect, because Mexico admits its own nationals without a passport or safe-conduct as a constitutional right, and where a destination does require a document we arrange it through the consulate.

You will speak to a mission coordinator, not a call centre. There is no charge for the benefits review and no obligation that follows it.

Where we fly

Each of these corridors has its own aircraft requirements, permit timelines and insurance pattern. The pages below set out what actually applies on each one.

Air ambulance Caribbean to the United States

Air ambulance Central America to the United States

Air ambulance South America to the United States

Air ambulance Hawaii to the mainland United States

Air ambulance Canada and the United States, both directions

Air ambulance Asia to the United States

Air ambulance Europe to the United States and Canada

Where we fly from, city by city

Each of these corridors has its own airports, its own insurance pattern and its own community. The pages below set out what applies on each one.

Air ambulance Mexico to Chicago

Air ambulance Mexico to Houston

Air ambulance Mexico to Los Angeles

Air ambulance Costa Rica to the United States

Air ambulance Haiti to the United States

Air ambulance for oil, gas and energy operations

Guía del Programa Paisano (en español)

Licensing and authority

Jet Rescue Air Ambulance operates as Med Jets USA, Inc. under Florida Department of Health EMS Service Provider licence AIR9505, status clear, verifiable on the State of Florida public licence register. Jet Rescue Air Ambulance is an indirect air carrier. All flights are operated by FAA Part 135 certificated direct air carriers or their foreign equivalents.