A question I get very often asked is how I deal with travel and health insurances when being a national in one country, a resident in another and basically spending my time everywhere in between.
Good question, because let’s be honest: though they can get expensive, travelling without an insurance can get a lotttt more expensive even!
Where most travel insurances only allow you to travel for a maximum of 30 days in a row, there are some insurances that are a bit non-mad friendly. Before diving into this and finding yourself all kinds of different advices and what you will need. Consider these things:
- Do you need to keep an insurance in your home country?
- If not, will this travel insurance also cover you in your home country and are there limits to the amount of visits you can make to your home country?
- What are the deductibles? Are they per year, or per claim?
- What are reasons for nót being covered, both health related as well as on lost or stolen luggage?
- How long will it maximum take them to reimburse your claim? ( you don’t want to be sitting somewhere for months eating bread while waiting for your insurance company to reimburse you)
- Are extreme sports included (for me as a surfer, motorcyclist, mountainbiker, this one is key), and what do they consider ´extreme sports´
- Does it offer world-wide coverage? Including or excluding the USA?
- Does it cover private health care (I have been in situations in which I honestly was quite happy I did not have to rely on public clinics only)
For the dutchies: Oom Verzekeringen
Being a Dutch national, the very best insurance I have been able to find is the one from Oom-verzekeringen. For my health insurance with
- worldwide coverage (except for the USA) and
- coverage for extreme sports
- I pay 50,- euros a month.
For the first two years of living in Spain, I used their ´temporarily in a foreign country´ insurance which covers me for two years having my residence in Spain. Since it has now been 7 years since I live in Spain, I had to switch to the ´permanently in a foreign country´ insurance and the price went up a bit. I decided to get a Spanish health and travel insurance. But still, for short-term travelers and nomads, this is a nice option!
- I chose to not have coverage in the USA, as otherwise my monthly fees will go up a lot. Whenever I travel over there I just get myself a short-term travel insurance for some weeks, that doés cover my short-term stay over there.
- Also, I decided to ´buy-out´ my deductible, which means that monthly I pay 5,- extra, but I set my deductible at 0,-, instead of the usual deductible of 100,-. Because I have noticed that the few times I go to doctors in foreign countries, it’s for little things and they charge very little. So I ended up never hitting the 100,- own risk and therefore always paying myself. So what did I have that insurance for then?
- They do not cover any pre-existing conditions though (such as in my case PCOS or anything related to this).
I also have a travel insurance with them, this includes reimbursement if anything valuable gets stolen, transportation home in case of emergencies, etc. I pay 80,- a year for this insurance.So in total I pay 680,- for both my international health as well as my travel insurance.
For the internationals: SafetyWing
On various occasions (even as a family with a baby) we have used SafetyWing. Their insurance is called ´insurance for nomads´, something we like!
- Their pricing is pretty reasonable at $37 per month if you’re between 10 and 39 years old. If you’re older, the price goes up a bit. It also changes if you exclude coverage in the US.
- They have a $250 deductible, but it’s per year—not per claim—which is a nice bonus.
- This insurance covers both travel health insurance and trip-related issues like interruptions and lost or stolen checked luggage. However, it doesn’t include coverage for equipment or personal belongings by default, so if you need that, you’ll want to add extra coverage.
- As expected, they don’t cover pre-existing conditions or preventive care.
- A bit oddly, their “worldwide” coverage doesn’t include North Korea, Cuba, or Iran (no idea why). And if you choose to exclude the US, you won’t be covered there either.
- Also, they specifically don’t cover kidnapping or express kidnapping in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Venezuela, or any country under US sanctions.
- For adventure sports, coverage is “limited,” but they have a detailed list. Surfing and snowboarding are covered—unless you go off-piste—along with motor accidents. That’s all I need!
- A cool perk: they include home-country medical coverage for 30 days every 90 days—unless you’re a US citizen. If the US is your home country, you get 15 days per 90, which is pretty rare for travel insurance.
Have a little emergency fund
Sure, I don’t want to sound like your mum, but no matter what you decide to go for, it’s always good to have a little emergency fund just in case of.. well.. emergencies.
