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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