Airmed duplicates insurance coverage
originally posted: 11/22/2006
reposted: Q:
We will be doing a home exchange with a family from France. Our permanent medical insurance plans only cover our first month outside of the USA. We are looking for limited coverage when our permanent coverage is no longer in force. Limited because we will return to the USA for any major medical emergency. For that purpose we have medical evacuation coverage with Airmed. To further reduce the cost of coverage we will consider a large deductible: $5000 or perhaps even larger. Please note that if hospitalized our coverage with Airmed will return us promptly to the United States where we have full coverage in place.
A: : All of the major brands or international travel medical insurance provide the features you request but it might help to point out a few additional details:
1. Since international medical insurance plans already include air ambulance and medical evacuation coverage, you do not need separate coverage from Airmed. The Airmed plan would seem to be a waste of money since you cannot receive payment from both sources in a coordinated policy like this.
2. International medical policies are priced and issued directly online. You can get prices of all of the options at Web sites like HCC product selection tool. All of the plans listed here are known to be top quality with high consumer satisfaction history. It takes only a few minutes to compare the choices and enroll for coverage. Insurance is issued on the same day.
3. After checking the prices, you might decide that a high deductible is not worthwhile. Since the premium rates for this type of supplemental coverage are already so low, the dollar amount of savings is insignificant compared to the potential risk of a higher deductible of thousands of dollars as you mentioned.