What Is International Health Insurance?

We're going to talk today about something that's really practical but also really important when especially when an international development professional is deciding or determining whether they can take a job and that's insurance and health insurance to be exact. So I wanted to ask you what exactly the definition or how you define international health insurance and to be specific global care. International health insurance is designed to cover the cost of medical treatment for expatriates when they're traveling abroad. This is typically going to cover new medical conditions, pre-existing conditions are usually limited or completely excluded altogether but again it's designed specifically for people traveling outside their home country. Kelly if you were traveling to Brazil for example for an assignment for two years, you would qualify for international health insurance once you left the U.S. This isn't just for Americans, it's for all nationalities. And what about eligibility? Who is eligible for this kind of insurance? I mean really anyone that's an expatriate is eligible for the coverage. So again this could be a professional consultant, this could be a retiree or even a student that's traveling overseas. Really the trigger is as long as you're traveling outside your home country you would qualify for this coverage. And is it common that an employer or whoever you're going to be traveling for this job for doesn't provide that insurance coverage? Is that generally the people who come to you for this kind of coverage? Yeah I mean it's a great question. We insure both individuals and groups and it's really of course up to the employer whether or not they want to provide the insurance and pay for it on behalf of the members of that organization. If they don't that's when the individual has to go to the market themselves and work with a broker like Clements to secure the coverage on their own. So often consultants or contractors are traveling overseas for short period contracts. Are they eligible too? Yeah absolutely. I mean the short answer is yes. And there's millions of contractors and consultants and just individuals that travel overseas each year that go uninsured because they don't think the coverage exists or they don't think it's affordable. I bought a plan a couple months ago for two weeks. A million dollars of coverage, it was $21. So it's very inexpensive and the great thing about short term coverage, which is commonly referred to as travel health insurance, is that you can get the coverage immediately. So if you were traveling last minute you could actually go online, apply, and get a policy immediately. I mean it only takes about two or three minutes to apply for the coverage and the great thing about this plan is again that it's very affordable but you also get an ID card that's printed off immediately that has important phone numbers on it that you can stick in your wallet or you can email to yourself so when you do travel overseas and you have an emergency you can call the phone numbers on there. Great. So yeah, it seems like a good idea and something that probably a lot of people don't realize is an option.