Teams: Short-term team plans for groups needing short-term insurance – Answers to questions

Where can I get the most cost-effective health coverage for my team? What information is needed? How early do I have to submit the application? We get these questions over the phone almost every day.

We have several options for short-term team health insurance. If you are sending out ten or more teams per year, you can get a single per-day rate for all team members. We can get a per-day quote for you, but to do so we need to have the approximate numbers: the average age of the team members, the number of days the teams will be outside the USA, how many on each team, and the number of teams going per year.

We also have a good cost-effective plan for organizations sending out less than ten teams per year. The premium can be as low as $1.00 a day for a young person, but the premium increases with the age of the insured.

This plan requires just the name, date of birth, date leaving the USA, and date returning to the USA. All the application process can be handled online. To get further information, please visit our home page and click on “Short-term Team Overseas Health Insurance.”

How many short-term teams go outside their home countries every year? One USA mission in 1996 sent at least 75,000 short-termers. Many sending churches and missions want coverage for these teams, coverage that includes medical evacuation insurance and catastrophic protection.

Several insurance companies are set up to cover teams, especially if there are a good number of teams being sent out in any given year. We have been able to write short-term team insurance coverage for as low as $1.10 a day per person. The variables of course determine the rate, e.g., average age of the team member, length of the trip, number in each team, number of teams sent in a year, maximum coverage, and deductible. One of the reasons missions and churches want coverage is because they don’t want to be libel for any injuries. Also, all are aware of the great cost of medical evacuation. The cost of medical evacuating someone back to their home country or to good medical care is generally somewhere between $25,000 to $75,000. If you send one or more teams and would like a quote on how much it would cost to cover your team, please contact us. You can also apply for short-term team coverage online at www.overseashealthinsurance.com

Hundreds of thousands of people go overseas every year for a term of two weeks to two months. Many of these go in teams. How do you insure a team going overseas?

Here are several options:

1. You can give each team member an application and let them take care of their own insurance.
2. If you are sending out ten or more teams annually, just give us the numbers of teams you are sending, the average age of your team members, the average number of members on each team, and the average number of days they will be overseas. We can give you a “cost-per-day” insurance quote. Usually the cost per-day runs from $1.20 to $2.00 per member.
3. Request from us the “Day Tripper” application for teams. In this plan you pay so much per day based on the age of each team member. This plan is excellent if you have from one to six teams going overseas during the year. If you desire more information about each type of coverage, please contact us.

Tens of thousands of short-term teams travel outside the USA each year. Often the cost of the trip for each team member is over $1,000, and yet team members go without adequate insurance. For less than $1.00 a day, each team member can have medical and medical evacuation protection for his trip.

You can apply for this short-term team insurance online. You will receive a confirmation of your coverage almost immediately, along with a medical ID card for each team member. You will find this short-term team health insurance referred to as “Day Tripper.” To apply, you will need the name, date of birth, and passport or Social Security number of each team member. You will also need the dates the team leaves and returns, and, of course, a credit card. This is a secure site for credit card applications.

We can also send you hard copies or electronic copies of this ?Day Tripper? plan. You can apply for this team coverage via e-mail, fax or regular mail, but the fastest way to get the coverage in place and receive a prompt confirmation is by applying online. If you run into problems while going through the application process, please call at 480-813-9100. We try to always have an agent near the phone to help you.

Now you can apply for health insurance for your whole short-term team online. You will receive a confirmation of your coverage almost immediately. To apply, simply go to the home page on www.overseashealthinsurance.com or www.missionaryinsurance.info and find “Day Tripper.” You can study the plan or apply. To apply, you will need the name, date of birth, and passport number of each team member. You will also need the date the team leaves and returns, and, of course, a credit card. This is a secure site for credit card applications.

If you run into problems while going through the application process, please call us at 480-813-9100. We try to always have an agent near the phone to help you.

How important is it? Just a few months ago a short-term team was riding in the back of a truck in Honduras when the brakes went out. The truck rolled over. One USA team member, a dentist, was killed, and at least 12 were seriously injured. Because these teams had short-term team insurance, within 24 hours all of the seriously injured had been medical evacuated to the USA and were in USA hospitals.

The financial cost to a USA organization to evacuate that many people would have been enormous, besides the medical costs. Total costs certainly exceeded $200,000. Obviously, this organization was really thankful, especially since the short-term team insurance coverage they had purchased was only $1.73 per day per-team member.

We can insure your organization if the total team days outside the USA amounts to 700 days. Thus, if you have 7 teams with 10 members on each team spending at least 10 days outside the USA, we can provide you with a per-day annual quote. If you are interested, please send us the following information about your teams:

1. Average number on each team
2. A “ballpark guess” at the average age of the team members
3. Average number of days the teams are out of the USA
4. The number of teams your organization will be sending in the coming 12 months

We will then get you a per-day quote for your consideration. If you agree to the team quote, we will set up an online application site just for your organization.

Will your American health insurance policy cover you during a short work trip outside the USA? Maybe partially, but generally not to the extent you expect or need. The small print on many policies excludes coverage outside the USA. And almost no domestic policies offer coverage for medical evacuation. The good news is that there are several companies offering short-term team coverage for as low as $1.10 per day. When the cost for an individual’s trip for a two-week work program outside the USA is often $1,500, it is good financial planning to add $20 to that cost to provide good health insurance coverage. Many groups, in the light of recent happenings, are making it mandatory that all team members have short-term health insurance before leaving for an overseas trip.

There are plans available that charge the same rate per day per participant. Other plans charge a per-day rate based on age. Good Neighbor Insurance would be happy to send you materials about health insurance coverage for short-term teams. If you are sending out more than ten teams a year, we can get you a per-day, per-participant quote which will provide the same rate for all ages. Please call or e-mail us for further information.

If you knew when an accident was going to happen, there would be very few accidents. Since we don?t know, we have insurance “if” an accident happens. Insurance is our best protection against the unknown.

We recently heard of a young woman who gave her life to service in South Africa. She had a great heart for people, always thinking of others, a hard worker, and her friends say a wonderful smile. On April 24 she was driving a young man home because of an illness. They had a head-on collision with another car. She was killed instantly. Others in the vehicle with her were injured.

This fine young woman had no premonition that she would die in South Africa. In fact, if she is like most of us, it never crossed her mind. But did she have trip insurance? The leaders of her NGO recommended that she purchase some overseas insurance, but they did not require it. In most cases, a “recommendation” will work, and travelers will buy insurance. But sometimes young travelers feel invulnerable and say, “Nothing will happen to me.” Probably the best rule of thumb is to require that everyone traveling and working under the auspices of your NGO have international travel insurance.

Global trip insurance provides medical evacuation and medical care for all medical needs while overseas. And it costs as little as $1.50 to $2.00 per day for travelers in their thirties.