Medical Insurance for Visitors to USA
Posted by C Raj
The costs of medical care in th USA are exorbitant. It is not possible for you to bear all the expenses on your own. This is the main reason that one should purchase visitor health insurance. USA visitor medical insurance is a short-term visitor medical insurance whose duration is from 0 days to 3 years.
The USA visitor medical insurance plan covers you with in/ out patients, doctor’s visit payments, surgery, expenses occurred due to diagnostic tests, hospitalization, rehabilitation services and even purchase of prescription drugs after the date of applying for the insurance.
It is a must to check the benefits of the plan before you purchase it. It is crucial to remember that the visitor insurance plans never cover the preexisting conditions.
You may be in a fix while buying a visitors insurance plan for your parents or in-laws visiting USA for the first time. People also purchase insurance from India itself which is also low in cost. For example, United States insurance companies can recognize your native insurance policies only after certain norms have been fulfilled.
There are may insurance companies that provide visitor health insurance coverage in the USA. The main difference between Indian and USA visitors insurance policies is that the Indian insurance companies may ask you to pay from your pocket and then claim the money when you are back in India. The US insurance policies will ask you to pay a minimum amount (called the deductible or a co-payment) and they will pay the remaining amount.
Beware that some doctors may not accept Indian visitor insurance policy. You may not even able to visit them. This is why one prefers purchasing insurance policy from USA based companies so as to avoid the hassles of making all the claims after they return to their own country.
There are two types of plans provided by the USA visitors medical insurance plan viz. fixed and comprehensive coverage plans.
* Fixed coverage plan : It is more expensive than the comprehensive coverage policy. In such type of plans, you have first to pay the deductible (can be once per incidence or per period of policy), the insurance company pays the set maximum amount for every procedure such as $55 for the doctor’s visit, $1400 per day for the hospital room charges, $3300 for surgery treatment and the likes. The balance is to be paid by you. The amount for scheduled benefits should not exceed $50,000 or $100,000.
Ensure that your expectations are met with as the prices are very attractive than the comprehensive plans before you purchase visitor health insurance plan. Be very careful while selecting the plans as they pay a fixed amount for each procedure.
Some of the well-known fixed coverage plan providers are IMG (Plan Name: Visitors Care) and SRI (Plan Name: INBOUND USA).
* Comprehensive Coverage plan: A visitor insurance plan is slightly more expensive as compared to fixed plan insurance,which is almost twice the premium, but provides much better coverage than fixed coverage plan.
In such type of visitors insurance plans, the deductible needs to be paid up (can be once per incident or per the period of policy), 80% for the first $5000 is paid for by the insurance company, while the remaining 20% has to be paid by you. After $5000, insurance will pay 100% up to a policy maximum for qualified medical expenses.
In some plans you first have to pay the 20% of the $5000 once in policy period and in some plans you will have to pay the 20% of the first $5000 for every incident.
Tags: Travel
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