Short-term International Travel Medical Insurance

Most domestic health insurance policies provide insufficient or no coverage when traveling overseas. It’s important to understand exactly what coverage your domestic health insurance provides while overseas to avoid paying extra for duplicate coverage.

Age is one of the primary factors that determines insurance rates. Some senior plans tailor their coverage and premium cost to people who are over 65 years old. This can help you get the care you are likely to need at an affordable price.

Certain regions of the world are considered higher risk destinations due to political instability, a high crime rate or poor medical care. Some medical insurance policies won’t offer coverage in those regions, while others require an add-on to their policy or charge higher premiums to travel there.

If you travel to a high-risk region, you’ll want to make sure your plan provides emergency evacuation or medical transportation coverage, or you’ll want to purchase it separately. This will help you get the medical care you need in the event of a serious illness or accident.

Are you traveling internationally for business or to study abroad? Are you visiting relatives, vacationing, taking a cruise or guided tour? Are you doing extreme sports, such as hang gliding, ziplining or mountain climbing?

There are international travel medical insurance plans tailored to studying, extreme sports and other activities you may be planning to do. For instance, extreme sports enthusiasts may want a higher medical limit, AD&D benefits and a hazardous sports rider.

If you’re going to be away for more than a month or two, odds are you’ll want to have a higher benefit to account for the greater exposure to risk. If you’re traveling longer than a year, you will need a long-term plan.

If you plan to travel only once within the next year, you’ll want to purchase single-trip coverage. If you plan to take multiple overseas trips within the next year, you may save money by purchasing multi-trip coverage, also called annual travel insurance.

Multi-trip plans cover you for all overseas trips during the covered period, as long as each trip doesn’t exceed the allowable period (usually 30 – 90 days). Multi-trip coverage makes sense (and is usually more cost effective) if you travel frequently and do not want to purchase a single policy each time you go on an international trip. These plans must be purchased on an annual basis, and they require you to have health insurance in the United States.

If you are concerned about your trip being cancelled, interrupted or delayed, or about losing your luggage, you may want to purchase a comprehensive travel insurance policy or trip cancellation insurance. A typical international travel medical insurance policy will offer limited or no coverage for problems with your transportation. However, a comprehensive travel insurance policy will cover trip cancellation or interruption, and lost luggage.

A deductible is an amount you need to pay before your policy will reimburse. For example, if you have a policy with a $250 deductible and you submit claims for eligible expenses totaling $400, the insurer will reimburse you only $150. Policies can often be customized to increase or decrease the deductible.

Most medical single trip plans automatically include a $250 deductible when you first view them. However, on most of these plans you will be offered the option to increase, decrease, or remove the deductible altogether. Medical multi-trip plans will always include a deductible and it cannot be removed. Similar to the single trip policies, this will be shown in the “Additional Benefits” section of the quote.

If you are traveling for 3 weeks or less, you may want to choose a low or no deductible, because the overall cost will not increase more than $10 or 20. If you need to use your insurance overseas, you will save the $125 or $250 deductible.

A maximum coverage limit is a monetary cap on your insurance coverage. This means that the insurance carrier will pay for medical costs up to the amount, and you are responsible for any costs above that amount. Maximum coverage limits typically range from $50,000 up to $2,000,000 and can vary for different policies and age bands.

Exclusions are specific events that are excluded from insurance coverage. Some plans may exclude coverage for certain activities considered risky, such as skydiving or scuba diving. You’ll want to check the policy carefully to make sure the activities you are planning are not excluded. Some insurance carriers offer optional hazardous sports riders that can be selected for an additional premium.

Depending on the plan you choose, the insurance company can look back a predetermined amount of time in medical records to see if the illness or injury is due to a previous medical event. Most have a lookback period that ranges from 6 months to 3 years (depending on the plan) prior to the effective date of your plan.

If you’re traveling with multiple people, most group travel plans offer significant discounts and simplify the process of registering for insurance and requesting care.