Health Insurance Abroad

Many expats fail to realise that they can lose the right to state healthcare under the NHS system when they move abroad.  In fact, it’s commonplace amongst expats to think that if they become poorly abroad they can simply hop on a plane, pop home and have treatment.  Whilst hospitals and doctors in the UK are more likely to treat you than not and not charge you, you may get away with it, but you are not necessarily within your rights to do so.

However, a consultation has been launched by the Department of Health to examine whether actually the NHS should be more lenient with those Brits who spend some of their time overseas, and instead of penalising them financially if they return for treatment, costs should be applied to foreign visitors instead to prevent so-called health tourists from visiting Britain for treatment and draining the NHS further.

The consultation is welcome as far as expats are concerned – and perhaps timely as we’re aware how badly performing many NHS trusts are as they are so underfunded.  If the UK can find a way to treat its citizens fairly but charge foreign visitors for care instead, surely that makes sense?

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Getting medical insurance in place is a requirement for all but a very limited few expatriates.  The fact of the matter usually is, you move abroad, you lose healthcare entitlements back home and are ineligible for free care in your new nation, so you have to get at least some basic health insurance in place.

Because, just like all insurances, it’s a nuisance to have to arrange medical insurance, most people are happy to compare and contrast on price, find a happy medium between cover and cost, and sign up to whoever is offering the best deal.  However, the fact of the matter is, not all medical insurers offer a good deal for the individual expatriate customer.

For example, some throw in medical evacuation cover, some insist you have it at great cost, and with other policies it’s an add-on that a lot of people choose to ignore.  So, let’s take a look, is medical evacuation cover for expatriates actually a necessity that you could really benefit from, or simply an unnecessary expense?

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As all expats know, international medical insurance is big business with companies competing for business within a large market pool of demand.  Premiums charged are high, and getting higher annually as we’re repeatedly told that inflation in the medical services industry runs far higher than in the ‘real world.’

So, what do all of these insurance companies do to attract our attention and win our business?  They attempt to offer us more bells and whistles on our policies to attract us and our financial commitment…however, there’s a definite limit to the amount of cover one needs, and this means that at some point, international health insurance companies have to get creative to get our interest.

Last year we saw some companies change the way they offered insurance and move to a more modular, streamlined and cost effective way of insuring their clients’ health – and this year it seems that IntegraGlobal has come up with yet another advantage that they can offer their clients.  Thanks to their IntegraGlobal electronic health records account, powered by Zaptag, portable medical record technology is now available to expatriates.  But is this a gimmick or actually something of maximum benefit to an international citizen?

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