Expat Health Insurance for Less

Summary: There are ways to get expat health insurance for less and this article shows you a few tips and tricks to use to find a good plan offering a decent level of cover but one that won’t break the bank.

There are no two ways about it, expat health insurance is expensive; in fact any private health care plan is nowadays because the rate of inflation in the medical industry far outstrips the rate of inflation in the majority of countries around the world.

But there are ways to get expat health insurance for less and this article shows you a few tips and tricks to use to find a good plan offering a decent level of cover but one that won’t break the bank.

But before we get into discussing how to get expat health insurance for less, here are some interesting and worrying facts and figures that highlight why it is so important that anyone going to live and work abroad gets protected with a good medical insurance plan.

Taking the United States as our example because it is the one country in the world synonymous in most people’s minds with high medical costs and even higher insurance costs...did you know that just under one sixth of the entire American economy is taken up with health care costs?  Health care and insurance fees are the average American citizen’s second largest lifetime outlay after rent or a mortgage and up to a million households in the US go bankrupt annually as a direct result of medical bills that they cannot afford to pay.  Yet despite knowing all this forty five million Americans live without any form of health insurance plan because they cannot afford insurance.

It needn’t be this way for you, if you’re going abroad to live, work or retire you can get expat health insurance for less by shopping round, understanding the jargon, identifying your real health care cover requirements and finding out about any free entitlements in the country in which you live as well as tax rebates claimable for health insurance fees paid.

There are insurance companies out there who specialize in the expatriate market.  They understand that some expats travel a great deal, live or work in more than one country and are often overseas with family and sometimes require a fixed duration of cover.  These companies are great…but if you’re going to live abroad permanently it is often cheaper to get private insurance locally in the country in which you live.  If you’re living abroad in a fixed location or have retired to a destination and are unlikely to be doing a great deal of traveling, a lot of the ‘add ons’ that expat health insurance companies offer will not be useful to you and you don’t want to have to pay for things you don’t want or need.

This brings me neatly to my next point, and that is identifying exactly what you want from your expatriate health insurance plan and provider.  If you’re young, healthy and only intending to live abroad for a fixed period it’s possible that all you require is what the American’s call ‘catastrophic health insurance’ for if you’re in a serious accident or contract a serious illness.  Alternatively you may only want medical evacuation in the event that you are laid low with something serious and just want to get home.  Both of these options are far cheaper for you.  Basically cut out all of the ‘add ons’ and additional levels of cover that do not apply to you and you will rapidly begin cutting down your monthly premium.

Another way to get expat health insurance for less is to increase your excess – this is the amount of the medical bill that you pay before your insurance company has to start paying.  The higher the excess the lower the monthly health insurance fee.  Some health insurance providers offer a substantial discount if you pay for your annual policy up front in one lump sum, it’s worth asking about any discount because most companies don’t advertise this little bonus!

And last but by no means least, find out whether you can deduct your expat health insurance premium from your annual tax bill and whether you have any level of entitlement to free health care cover for emergencies for example in the country in which you’re living.  If you do then this is another add on that you can eliminate from your policy helping you to get even cheaper expatriate health insurance when you’re living abroad.

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