Medical Insurance in Spain ?
 

Will be in Spain for 5 months.Should I look for a provider of Health Insurance or will Travel Insurance be enough? Any recommendations for providers?
Does travel insurance normally cover sudden illness, like stomach pains for example. How is "life threatening" interpreted?

Travelerone it's important to look at the terms and conditions of your insurance and that will tell you what is covered, and what isn't, for example, pre-existing condition...and the definition of these things seems to be changing lately, depending on the provider you are using.

Travel insurance doesn't usually cover you for more than three months, but there are exceptions.

Check your existing insurance to see if that covers you for extended periods abroad.

If you are an EU citizen you could be covered by your home health service with your EHIC card.
If you are not an EU citizen remember you need a visa!

Have you read the responses you got last year to a similar question that you posed?

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...p-coverage.cfm

Yes, as already mentioned, there are insurance policies (expat coverage for Americans and Canadians) you can purchase for long term coverage, but not knowing where you are from, it's hard to point you in the right direction.

Which brings up the question of how do you plan on staying in Spain for five months? If you want to obtain an extended stay visa, you will be required to show proof of insurance and your financial situation.

indyhiker : I forgot i had posted last September on this subject. I even did a search before I posted this time but my previous inquiry never came up. I was looking for recommendations on specific companies for coverage of a US citizen and possible opinions on "life threatening" which frequently appears in summaries of travel insurance.

Before we all try and help we would like to know if you are aware of the Schengen agreement?
If so and you realise you cannot stay in the countries within the zone then it is not going to help you try and get cover.

Contact insuremytrip.com and discuss the length of your trip and any pre-existing conditions that you have. They have policies that cover people for many months.

In his previous thread, linked to by Indyhiker, travelone says the visa problem is sorted. No explanation of how it is sorted. If they are on a student visa they had better be attending school regularly. I would have thought proof of insurance was required to get any visa, but I don't know.

Travelerone, if you clink on your username, it will take you to your previous threads or threads that you have posted within.

As for your questions, I really think you'd be better off getting clarity for terms like "life threatening" from the specific insurer(s) that you're considering so that they can hopefully share with you the definitions used within the policy itself. If the term isn't defined, than as I lawyer, I'd suggest that the term will be given its ordinary meaning, e.g., an illness or injury that is reasonably likely to cause irreparable harm and/or death if left untreated (clear as mud, no?).

But that's just a legal guess on my part. The insurer's understanding/definition of the term is the only one that's relevant to you, and I'd caution you against relying on anybody else's definition--even if a relatively educated or experienced one. The contract/policy controls after all; what Fodor's forum members have to say isn't going to help you much. That said, I'd hope any policy you do it covers a "sudden illness"; I'm not sure what good it is otherwise!

As someone else has suggested, talk to insuremytrip. If they are able to help identify specific insurance companies or policies that will work, then contact those particular companies for information regarding the specifics (fine print) of their coverage.

Allianz will cover you for five months. They are very helpful on the phone if you want to give them a call after checking out their options.

https://www.allianztravelinsurance.com/

Last year while in Barcelona I was taken by ambulance to Quiron hospital and admitted for a week.
I had purchased travel insurance with Allianz through insure my trip.
Allianz was a pleasure to work with. They had someone always available to talk to by phone and were readily available in dealing with the hospital administration. They caused no headaches whatsoever. They followed up with me until I got home to the states. They were like night and day compared to my private insurance company, which eventually covered my emergency room stay.

Thanks for all the feedback.
Looks like I'll be deciding between Allianz and InsureandGo (Mapfre owned). Both have very similar pricing for trip insurance.

Seems like all trip insurance companies get thumbs up ratings from people that buy their insurance but never have to make a claim! But when they have to pay out, there are horror stories about lost/incomplete paperwork, rejections due to interpretations of their "fine print", passing of buck between departments, etc.
rialtogrl & giro: you recommend Allianz, but did you actually get them to process a claim?

As far as Health Insurers go, none that I contacted (DKV, Catalana Occidente Seguros,Sanitas, World Nomads) insure people over 75.