Expats sick to death of soaring healthcare charges

If you’re in the planning stage of emigration or are relocating within your present company, expensive healthcare costs are a crucial part of the process.

As private hospitals worldwide hike their costs, expats world wide are sick to death of having to pay excessive amounts for standard care. It’s one thing if your company is picking up the bill for your private healthcare insurance, although it’s likely they’re not happy about it either, but for retirees and entrepreneurs it’s another story entirely. Many popular expat destinations expect suitable healthcare cover as part of their visa requirements, with self-funding from savings or a regular pension not acceptable.

In the vast majority of favourite expats destinations, private healthcare is now a massive cash cow fed by expats and so-called medical tourism, with new hospitals springing up in the most unlikely places, staffed by professionals usually lacking in anything resembling comprehension of their patients’ languages. Another problem is that experienced medical staff, including surgeons and diagnosticians, are rare in many expat hubs, doing the rounds of all the private hospitals in their area thus giving no choice to patients unhappy with their treatment.

For expat retirees, healthcare insurance is as close to essential as it’s possible to get, offering a choice between budget cover and the full deal costing a small fortune every year. Insurers push the need for medivac services in countries with less than first-class facilities but, for example, what’s the point of being transferred back to a Western country where the cost of treatment is totally unaffordable and there’s no free option? Age limits are another problem – no matter how healthy the applicant is – and many have found themselves without the option of insurance even although they’ve never claimed and can prove they’re in top condition.

If you do claim at some point, be prepared for your insurance bill to double or even to find your company won’t insure you in future. Medical insurance firms will find any possible way to rid themselves of claimants in case they need to claim again at some time in the future. The moral of this sad but true tale is that retiring overseas isn’t just finding your dream home in an exotic location as, together with almost every aspect of life in the 21st century, it’s really all about your money.