Retiree health insurance gap coverage
 

Plan to spend 5 months in Spain in 2016 and find my Medicare supplemental health insurance only covers me for 60 days outside of the US. Am 76 years old & in excellent health. Can anyone recommend how/thru whom to obtain coverage for just the three months remaining?

Check out "Insure my trip"... (www.insuremytrip.com)

5 mos ? How are you swinging that visa-wise ?

yeah, I think they even have some annual medical plans on insuremytrip.com

But you have to check with the plan to make sure that when you say you want coverage for 3 months that it will be valid given the entire length of your trip. A lot of these plans will not cover trips that long because they basically do not want (or it may even not be legal) to cover people who have essentially moved abroad for long periods of time.

Here are a few companies that will write plans for up to a year http://www.globalunderwriters.com/international.aspx

http://www.insubuy.com/atlas-international-insurance/

http://www.imglobal.com/en/img-insur...Insurance.aspx

I use Seven Corners. You may need to insure for the full trip, call them up and ask. Also, a Medigap policy only covers 80% with a $50,000 lifetime cap, best case.

Do you have a visa that allows you to stay in Spain for so long; the tourist visa allows for only 90 days?

Is this fall open enrollment time for you for next year? If so, perhaps for next year you could switch to a different carrier with a different type of policy. I see to recall when we were checking things out last fall there were a couple different carriers that offered plans that would do what you want. But, of course, every state has different plan options.

Medigap plans are written to federal guidelines.

Medicare does NOT cover you outside of the US - and I have never seen a MediGap plan that does so - since it is only to cover the small percentage unpaid by Medicare.

Medical insurance attached to travel insurance would do so - but you need to read and understand it fully since it may not cover certain preexisting conditions.

NYTraveler, Medicare has coverages that are valid outside the US but as Thursdaysd said, there is a lifetime $50K maximum. Additional coverage via a private insurer is a good idea. I have used Allianz in the past and made claims that were paid promptly and politely.

Nyt and shello are both partly wrong and partly right....

Medicare provides NO, zero, nada coverage outside the US.

There are some Medigap plans, not all, that do provide coverage, I have one. They are all subject to the limits I stated.

I was going to post this update to my last comment last night, but my wifi password had expired:

Medicare does not, contrary perhaps to popular belief, cover all medical expenses. There is an annual deductible, 20% co-pays, and a number of other limitations. People who can afford it buy supplemental policies, known as Medigap, offered by insurance companies, though not by all companies in all states. There are a number of policies, known by letters (for example, I have a Plan F), but the government requires the insurance companies to offer identical benefits for each letter - so my Plan F is the same as the Plan F for someone living across the country, although my premium might be slightly different. The benefits I listed above are the maximum available on any plan, and are only offered on a subset. So the OP is stuck with the limits, unless s/he could find a Medicare Advantage plan that offers foreign coverage, which I would think unlikely. (I am not a fan of Medicare Advantage, but not for that reason.)

Also, open enrollment is not a very helpful concept for Medigap plans. Obamacare's requirements do not apply to Medicare patients. Once you have enrolled in a plan, during an initial open enrollment period, you can trade down to a plan with lesser coverage without medical underwriting, but not up.

You may want to check with MedAdvantage plans in your area in lieu of traditional Medicare + Supplements.

My MedAdvantage plan specifically covers me in foreign countries - it's specifically listed in their summary of coverage. and it works: I had an appendix rupture leading to an emergency appendectomy while in Canada and my Med Advantage plan followed through as advertised).
But one caution: unless the provider is willing to make arrangements, they usually require you to pay and then you get reimbursed by the insurer. So since then, I always travel with travel insurance with medical coverage in addition to my Med Advantage.

What thursdayd said. IMHO, plan F is the only Medigap plan that makes sense for people who decide to go with supplemental. But that's another discussion.

Back to the OP, after researching various sites including insuremytrip.com and squaremouth.com, we wound up getting a "Liason International" policy from Seven Corners for our upcoming Spain trip.
https://www2.sevencorners.com/insurance-for-travelers/

They also have plans for up to 187 days, or up to 3 years out of country.

There are other companies out there as noted above. Good luck, it seems that medical insurance is never an easy or straightforward decision.

Several years ago when we had Medicare, I was able to get medical insurance for a trip to Canada for about $17 a month for two. Now that we have Medicare Advantage (Humana), we are covered for foreign travel, but I still buy trip insurance which covers other things besides health care. The health care itself is cheap--it's the trip interruption and cancellation that are expensive.

Enough with the insurance already. The real issue here is, as was mentioned upthread, the OP doesn't realize that he can only stay in Spain for 3 mos, not 5 !!

@Bedar - how do you "know" that? It is entirely possible that the OP is an EU national. I am a naturalized US citizen, but also a UK citizen. Raising the issue is one thing, but no reason to jump to conclusions.

He did mention Medicare gap insurance which indicates to me that he is a US citizen. If he were an EU national, he would have the card that is issued by EU govts. which allows their citizens free medical care in Spain. I have US and EU citizenship but don't have the EU card so must rely on US insurance. Happily my Medicare Advantage plan covers emergency treatment abroad, so I can stay in Spain for however long I like on my EU passport and am covered by the Advantage plan.

So, you have US and EU citizenship, with US health insurance. <i>Even though you are an EU national.</i>

As I just posted, I have US and EU citizenship, and US health insurance.

No reason to assume that the OP may not be in the same situation. He would only have EU insurance if he were an EU resident, which clearly he is not.

Only the OP knows, just like The Shadow.

<<the health care itself is cheap--it's the trip interruption and cancellation that are expensive.>>

not exactly, it's the amount of money you want to insure that is the expensive part. The trip interruption is cheap. Cancellation is different from trip interruption. And that isn't expensive if you don't have any prepaid amounts. Just try putting $50 into insuremytrip as the amt you want to cover and see how cheap it is. Medical is cheap for short trips, also, as part of the package.

But long-term policies for a year for travel are expensive, just for the medical, and I imagine the OP's age also will get it up there. The issue is that the odds something will happen medically in two weeks is a heck of a lot different than five months.

Why would one presume the OP "doesn't know" he/she can't go abroad for five months, or that he cannot? He seems to know what he's talking about, I presume five months in Spain isn't on a whim. Besides, you just need to get a long-term visa, it isn't that you can't do it. For a retiree who doesn't intend to work and has sufficient funds, I don't see the problem. You jst need to fill out the long-term visa form for people who don't intend to study or work, prove you don't have a public health disease, have sufficient funds, and have your medical insurance.