When we quit our jobs last year, we lost our health insurance. When we went to Central America we did not have health insurance that worked there or travel insurance. We did not have any major health issues while we were there. Any medicine we needed was easily accessible and affordable.
A big misconception we found out was that our company health insurance plans that we have had for years did not cover us outside of the United States. All the years we took vacations abroad we were not be covered by that insurance if we fell ill.
We could have gotten travel insurance, but we are not just vacationers now. Travel insurance is short term and covers trip cancellations, belongings, and emergency medical situations while you are temporarily abroad. We need to have a health insurance plan as we travel for the foreseeable future.
International health insurance plans do exist. Such plans are much cheaper than health insurance plans offered in the United States as long as you do not come home to the United States. Since we decided to come back to the United States for a while, an international health plant that would also cover us in the US for part of the year was a must. It was not so easy to find, and it increased the cost of our insurance significantly. Six months is the longest we will be covered in the United States and the plan we found does not include preventative medicine.
Getting health insurance for Michael was difficult since he has had cancer twice. Michael got denied by many companies. These companies will not exclude cancer. They deny coverage, full stop. I also had trouble with some insurance companies because of an illness I had twenty years ago.
We looked at plans under the affordable care act, but many only have coverage in the state where your coverage is procured. That will not work for us since we do not live in any one state and we have plans to travel around the United States.
We did find a plan. We have health insurance for catastrophic events and we are covered in the United States until the end of February. We asked our broker to confirm we would be covered for COVID and he swore that we were, but when Michael recently called the insurance company, they told him that only COVID testing is covered. We are working to straighten that out.
We are hoping we don’t get sick in the United States. We will get preventative medicine taken care of when we get to another country. It is unfortunate that the United States health care system is so broken.
