International Healthcare Services Despite premium hikes, Andrew Coyne finds that expatriates are increasingly buying the most comprehensive PMI cover available For those who would be expatriates, private medical insurance (PMI) is a pre-requisite. It may be included as part of a relocation package provided by your employers, but if it’s not then you need to be sure that you and your family are covered from day one of your international adventure. Obviously, the more exotic the location to which you are heading, the more urgent is the need for comprehensive cover to cope with all eventualities. Those setting up camp in Africa, for example, cannot rely on local health facilities and will need to have a policy in place to fly them - and their family - out of the country in an air ambulance should the need arise. International Healthcare Services & Worldwide cover Worldwide cover
Biting the PMI bullet means paying for cover that will let you sleep at nights. The more bespoke the policy, the more you will pay for it - but can you really afford not to include dental cover if you, your wife and two children are based in, say, Azerbaijan? The idea of having insufficient cover when an emergency occurs while you are thousands of miles away from home, and the good old NHS, doesn’t bear thinking about from a health point of view nor, it should be said, from a cost point of view. International Healthcare Services - Premiums Which is why the fact that despite premiums going up all the time - some estimates suggest by as much as 30 per cent a year in the UK - it is increasingly the more comprehensive products which expatriates are choosing. It’s horses for courses, of course. If your travels take you to Europe, a huge market with some two million British expatriates, then you can take advantage of the form E111, which provides you with reciprocal state healthcare facilities in EU member countries. You may want to top this policy up with a private healthcare plan, but the chances are you won’t necessarily need evacuation and repatriation facilities. However, if you have a peripatetic lifestyle, it is probably worth buying a policy that, at the very least, gives you temporary cover for travel outside the continent. As David Ashdown at WPA says: “If people travel a lot they are advised to take comprehensive cover.”
If you are going further afield to work or live, you will probably want to add all the bells and whistles that you can to your policy. International Healthcare Services - International healthcare Policies International healthcare policies are priced on a number of factors. The first one is geographical. Because the cost of healthcare in the US, Canada and the Caribbean is so prohibitive, worldwide cover which includes these areas will cost you more. Obviously - as with all insurance polices - your personal circumstances will be taken in to account (health, age and so on). Policies that cover ongoing conditions will cost more.
And above and beyond these things, the cost of your cover will depend on what you want to include and, by extension, what you are willing to exclude. PMI providers usually offer a number of policies (perhaps called things like standard) at the basic, off-the-shelf end of the market, through to prestige or exclusive, at the top end. 
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