International Family Health Insurance 101
If we were to ask you to build a totem pole of your life, what would it look like?
Totem poles often reflect what is important to the builder in ascending order. As a person who loves to travel, we bet somewhere on your totem pole is a carving for adventure, but we know it is not at the very top.
The summit of your totem pole represents the single most important thing to you. No matter how much passion you have for global traveling your family will always take the crown. Now, your Nomad lifestyle may be only a couple of blocks down from the peak of your totem, but our families are what give us our foundational and core purpose. Without them who would we be?
Most of us desire for our families to thrive and prosper with good fortune and good health. Traveling is usually a family affair, and while protecting yourself is essential, covering what matters most to you is paramount. International Family medical coverage is one major building block to ensuring that our families remain protected while traveling abroad.
What Is an International Family Medical Insurance Plan?
It can be easy for us to forget the peace of mind from enrollment with various insurance providers at home. Our home, auto, life, and health insurance coverage collectively provide us with financial security in the event of catastrophes and death. Being too close to something can often cause you to ignore or forget its importance. When this happens we are often jolted from our absent-mindedness when we lose it.
When you travel abroad many of the insurance comforts at home stay at home and the uncertainties of life pack a bag and come with us, making it all the more important that you purchase a comprehensive international family health insurance policy to ensure you and your family members and dependents are protected against the curve balls life can throw at you.
At Insured Nomads, we call our International Family Health Insurance plans Global Health Insurance. These plans provide you with coverages for inpatient care such as hospital stays; outpatient care such as emergency visits; mental health care for depression and anxiety, and other care such as vaccinations.
These plans are designed for families that plan to live, work, or study abroad for more than a year or more, sometimes referred to as Expats. They are not suited for those who are only traveling for short periods of time, or those who are planning to take multiple trips a year. For those travelers, we offer travel insurance called World Explorer plans to cover your insurance needs while abroad.
The Cost of Global Health Insurance
Traveling has never been an inexpensive hobby, but we work hard to price our travel and global health insurance at a price point that doesn’t further burden your budget while also providing you with the very best plan possible to protect you. The cost of our Global Health Insurance is only a fraction of the cost of a catastrophe or emergency without it.
Our typical Global Health Insurance premium for a family of four is under $750 a month, or roughly $200 a person for a family of four. To put that in perspective, your premium for 12-months would be under $9,000 for comprehensive health insurance from Insured Nomads. Compare that to the average cost of a hospital stay being about $3,000 a day per person and the benefit is quickly evident.
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Suppose all four of you were involved in an auto accident and spent just two days in the hospital. In this hypothetical scenario, your bill would easily be over $24,000! In just two days you would be responsible for an amount that is more than double the cost of a policy’s annual premium with just one emergency. What’s more, these figures don’t account for the care and aid you receive after leaving the hospital. It is clear that the cost of not having Global Health Insurance is just too great of a risk to take.
Self-Insure vs. Risk Redistribution
Unfortunately, many of us do not have the cash assets to self-insure all of our risks. Even some of the most wealthy nations and businesses in the world still choose to forego self-insurance and share their risk exposure with a travel health insurance company or international travel insurance company. You can redistribute your risk to protect your financial and real estate assets and guarantee reimbursement for medical care.
When you experience a peril without insurance, you face the entire liability of that exposure alone; essentially, self-insuring. Whether it is a car wreck, a natural disaster, political unrest, cancer, heart attack, stroke, or childbirth, the costs associated with these exposures are significant.
If you do not have adequate insurance protection from a trusted partner like Insured Nomads, you will be forced into a potential scenario that could change your entire way of life. Without the cash assets on hand, you could lose your future earnings, real estate assets, and personal property assets.
We started this article with reference to a totem pole. We want you to keep that totem pole on your mind all the time. Think about what is important to you throughout life when you are making decisions, especially financial decisions.
Not having our money and financial assets protected can cause an unnecessary burden, while also compromising the foundation of our entire life.
Advantages of Global Health Insurance
Insurance, in all of its forms, is risk mitigation, redistribution, and financial insulation. Put more plainly, it allows us to shift the burden and risk of financial insecurity onto the insurance company.
We retain a small portion of the risk in the form of coinsurance, deductibles, and premiums, but the bulk of the risk lies with the company. This guarantees that if we experience a covered peril that will cost thousands of dollars to mitigate that we do not have to bear that burden alone.
The benefit of purchasing a Global Health Insurance plan from Insured Nomads is two-fold:
First, you receive a comprehensive plan that covers almost every health need that may
arise while you are abroad, offering you financial protection and security.
Second, and most importantly, you receive peace of mind while you travel and live abroad. Peace of mind may seem like an intangible benefit, but we consider it the greatest benefit with significant tangible outcomes.
It offers you the ability to carry out your life without fear of financial ruin, in turn increasing the quality of your life, reducing stress, and the freedom to live the Nomad life you have always dreamed of.
You cannot afford to leave home for more than a year without the protection and peace of mind that Global Health Insurance provides.
Synonyms Galore
Rest assured, we didn’t get you excited to learn by calling this article a 101 course for nothing! In the insurance world, there are a lot of names and titles for things that are synonymous, and to be honest, it can all become confusing if you are not careful.
For instance, a plan and a policy are the same thing and represent the entire insurance product you purchased. The policy lists which perils are covered and which are excluded, what the plan limits are, the deductibles, coinsurance, etc.
Other terms that can get confusing are Global Health Insurance, international health insurance, global medical insurance, and international medical insurance. All of these terms represent the insurance designed to protect you against medical expenses from basic health care from medical facilities, emergency medical evacuations, prescription costs, dental and vision care, and other major and basic medical needs. Pecan or pecan (did you read it both ways), they all refer to the same type of policy.
Expat, or expatriate, is sometimes thought of as a negative term, but it simply refers to someone who is leaving their home country for an extended amount of time. International students are Expats. Employees of global companies working in foreign nations are Expats. Artists seeking inspiration for their art are Expats.
In fact, most of us are U.S. citizens who are Expats at heart, even if we don’t meet the definition, because many of us wish we could! How awesome would it be to have the option to work remotely and live in Italy, France, or Fiji for a year? If you can find negativity in that we would be surprised! Being an Expat doesn’t mean you despise or renounce your nationality, it just means you love experiencing the world and being a member of the global community.
Lastly, one title in insurance that is not synonymous with the terms global health insurance, international health insurance plans, and international medical insurance is Travel Insurance. Travel medical insurance is not designed for an Expat and is instead for those going on short-term trips, or several short trips in a year.
Travel insurance is a packaged policy that provides protection against health emergencies as well as personal property, issues due to pre-existing conditions, wellness exams from a local health care provider, medical evacuation, repatriation of remains, trip interruption, and trip cancellation.
Check out our comprehensive Insurance Glossary.
Who We Are
Like you, we are world citizens, deeply connected to the global community of those who break barriers and go beyond borders. We do not limit ourselves to the confines of just one continent, or any single nation for that matter, and neither do you.
Our team is made of travelers and nomads, people who often live, work, and play outside of their home country. Our organization is diverse, global, and distributed. We are as passionate about exploration, adventure, and global enlightenment as our clients, and because of that one thing is certain — we get you!
We’ve experienced the frustrations that come from the complexities of insurance firsthand. There’s a need for change in how the insurance experience unfolds for those who travel and encounter the unexpected, the unplanned, or the catastrophic. Insurance contracts can be complicated, and insurance terms even more so. We have made it our mission to change that.
The trials you face while abroad should be met with support and care, not avenues to find a way out which can lead only to abandonment. They should be handled with empathy and in a language you understand. Getting the right policy and filing a claim when needed should be made simpler with modern tools and technology. You deserve an insurance company steeped in a spirit of solidarity and generosity.
We’ve come together to bring this transformation about and make it a reality so that we may all explore the world with protection beyond insurance, increased wellbeing, and unparalleled peace of mind.
We look forward to the journey. Whether it’s in New York, Beijing, or London, we will see you out there!
About Insured Nomads
Insured Nomads is the first to take an integrated traveltech, fintech and insurtech solution to the world for remote workers, globally distributed teams, expats, and travelers. Their purpose is to make travel as safe and smart as staying at home. They do this by providing health insurance with exceptional medical benefits in tandem with wellbeing, safety, security, and advanced tech-enabled solutions for ease of payment for healthcare, emergency response and evacuation. Insured Nomads is available through affinity relationships, direct, embedded and through select brokers and partners for groups and individuals.
Information on integration, collaboration and partnership contact Brett Estep: brett@insurednomads.com
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Sources:
Expatriate Definition | Investopedia
Hospital and Surgery Costs | Paying for Medical Treatment | Debt
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