Need Help on how to get health insurance while traveling

[luvmydogs]

I know there are many people who travel all the time. We should be gone rv'ing for about 6 months, but my health insurance does not cover us if we are out of state. How does everyone do it? There is no telling when an accident or something may come up so how do I get covered while on the road. Any suggestions would be welcome.

[DianneOK]

I have cleaned this thread up. If there is anymore political bashing I will close it

[lbrjet]

Rice wrote:
Or another way to put it is that insurance was required, and if you didn't comply, you incurred a financial consequence if you got caught. Compare it with auto liability insurance--if you don't have it, you incur a financial consequence if you get caught. But you never hear people talking about how those without auto liability insurance are merely exercising their choice not to have it, and instead choosing to suffer a consequence.

And sure, you have to wait until open enrollment to get insurance once you're sick, but the ACA's disincentive to do so is no longer applicable, so those who want to gamble and wait until they're sick are better off than they were before.

Driving without liability insurance is against the law in most states. Declining health insurance is not against the law in any state that I'm aware of. The ACA enrollment numbers didn't change much when the penaly went away. There are more people working now than ever before, this has probably has had more of an effect on enrollment than the removal of the penalty.

[Rice]

There are two types of this kind of coverage in an auto insurance policy: medical payments (Med Pay) and personal injury protection (PIP). In some states, PIP coverage is mandatory, so people might already have it without realizing it. PIP covers more than Med Pay (e.g., lost wages), and is generally more expensive.

The details vary by state.

But your suggestion made me think about what I have. I know that I opted for Med Pay on my RV policy, but I'm not sure whether I have Med Pay or PIP on my toad's policy--they are with different companies, and I shop the RV policy heavily, while I've had my toad insured with the same company for years, so I haven't thought about the toad's insurance in a long time. I need to check into that.

[Optimistic_Para]

I'll throw out one more idea that I've read about but have no personal experience with.

On the RV Dreams website,on a page devoted to RV Insurance: Understanding the Coverages

https://www.rv-dreams.com/rv-insurance-coverages.html


They talk about something called Medical Payments insurance. They say:

Medical Payments (aka MedPay)

This is an optional coverage* which pays for the costs of medical care
for you, your family, and any passengers resulting from a covered accident. It may be used regardless of fault.

This coverage is fairly inexpensive and may be a great supplement to
your health insurance especially if you have a high deductible health
insurance policy. If you have medical costs resulting from an accident, this coverage pays quickly and may save you paying for a high out-of-pocket deductible.

It may also be worthwhile if you have no health insurance. It's
certainly not a substitute for health insurance and only kicks in if you are injured in a covered accident, but it may be worth the premium.

* - Some states require insurers to include a minimum amount of this
coverage.

[Rice]

Optimistic Paranoid wrote:
Have you considered getting one of those Medical Evacuation / Air Ambulance policies that will fly you back to your home state where your regular insurance will cover you?
...
Hope that helps . . .

I think it does! I went to the link you gave and it looks very interesting. I did quotes for people under 75: for one person it's $525/year, and for two people it's $725/year.

Of course the devil is in the details, as always, and I wouldn't get it without first looking at the actual plan documents. And it's of no help for fulltimers who are interested in a way to get routine medical care while traveling, but for healthy people who can't get insurance with a nationwide network and don't want to get wiped out because of an emergency, it might be a viable option.

Thanks for throwing something new in the mix!

[Rice]

Or another way to put it is that insurance was required, and if you didn't comply, you incurred a financial consequence if you got caught. Compare it with auto liability insurance--if you don't have it, you incur a financial consequence if you get caught. But you never hear people talking about how those without auto liability insurance are merely exercising their choice not to have it, and instead choosing to suffer a consequence.

And sure, you have to wait until open enrollment to get insurance once you're sick, but the ACA's disincentive to do so is no longer applicable, so those who want to gamble and wait until they're sick are better off than they were before.

[lbrjet]

Rice wrote:

ajriding wrote:
You wait until you are sick, then go get insurance.

Actually, it's the current administration that opened the door to this practice by no longer requiring everyone to have health insurance. Only now are they free to wait until they're sick to get health insurance, without any consequences.

The rules on getting insurance through ACA have not changed one bit. You can only sign up during open enrollment or if you lose your current insurance.

Not sure where you are getting your fake news from.

Insurance was never required either. It was your choice to get insurance or pay an extra tax. The current administration just set the tax to zero. It was always so low it didn't make a difference anyways.

[Optimistic_Para]

luvmydogs wrote:
The only thing my insurance covers out of state is emergency room. Well that's great but if its something that needs surgery or if you have a stroke or something, that emergency room coverage wont cover it. I'm not old enough for medicare yet. So basically no one knows of any policies or coverage that covers you out of your own state? And basically the way the insurance works nowadays, you are held hostage in your own state, or pray that nothing happens to you when you cross state lines.

I'm coming to this kind of late, and being a retired state worker, I personally have good insurance that covers me anywhere, so I have no PERSONAL experience with this, but:

Have you considered getting one of those Medical Evacuation / Air Ambulance policies that will fly you back to your home state where your regular insurance will cover you? Some allow your spouse or another family member to ride along with you. There are even a few that will arrange for your RV to be returned for you.

Google Medical Evacuation Insurance and you will find a bunch of them.

Here's one: https://travelmedevac.com/?orid=1903

Hope that helps . . .

[luvmydogs]

Katie sent you a private message

[luvmydogs]

And we ALL PAY FOR IT!! One of the many things in the past sad few years.

[luvmydogs]

We have a mail service in Florida, we have no other address at the moment. I'm told to be able to use our mail service address as a residence I have to get a fla. drivers license and register and insure my vehicles in Florida.Not changing my vehicles since they are registered with my LLC. My thought was to rent a room somewhere in Florida to use the address and then try to get a policy. Why would I have to have a vehicle registered in the state just to get insurance if I had an address. This whole thing has made it very difficult because as far as I know, I am only covered now for emergency rooms. When they move you out of the emergency room, your NOT covered anymore. This worries me on a daily basis.

[Rice]

Katy19 wrote:
The travel insurance is through DAN. Divers Alert Network. I also have their dive insurance (different plan) put it is not required if you just want to buy the travel ins. policy. We have not used it yet. I plan on usually paying cash or cc then submitting it for reimbursement. We are 58 and 59 yrs old. We pay 500/yr.

I found their website, and of course it doesn't have many details. Is incurring the expenses and submitting for reimbursement how the plan works? It could be, since they may not care how much you're paying as long as there's a cap on what they'll have to pay, and if you run up an unnecessarily large bill, that's not their problem.

Also, do you know what your policy defines as a "trip"? The website said it had to be more than 100 miles from home, which is no problem because one's regular insurance would cover the stuff close to home. But I'd want to be sure that being away from "home" for a year or more at a time would still be considered a "trip."

I'll also note that it excludes coverage for pre-existing conditions.

But I'm thinking that for people in a state that has Ambetter EPO policies (18 states), an arrangement like this might be an option, assuming a person has access to Ambetter's network in whichever states it operates, regardless of which state the policy was issued in. I don't know.

And Ambetter doesn't offer any out-of-network coverage at all, but then again neither do HMOs. At least with Ambetter, there might be options other than going to your home network, if all states where Ambetter issues policies are considered in-network.

[Katy19]

Hello, we have Kaiser in northern Californian through the ACA. We used to use BC but they changed from a decent PPO to a terrible EPO that forced all local care to be done at the local very $$$ hospital. We used to be able to drive 40 minute to Reno, NV and get reasonable care. We changed to Kaiser and use a family members address. We recently sold our home so we are also mobile in the RV or in Mexico.

Our plan has a high deductible and we now also buy a annual travel insurance policy. I dont care about travel reimbursement but it also gives us 50,000 in health insurance. SInce we ski all winter, being without insurance coverage is not a good idea. Kaiser covers us in an emergency. I figure if its not a big enough emergency and they want us back in California, 50,000 is enough to cover stabilization, imaging and some testing.

When I communicated with Kaiser regarding coverage, I did it through email so i can keep all the correspondence in my records. The travel insurance is through DAN. Divers Alert Network. I also have their dive insurance (different plan) put it is not required if you just want to buy the travel ins. policy. We have not used it yet. I plan on usually paying cash or cc then submitting it for reimbursement. We are 58 and 59 yrs old. We pay 500/yr.

I was in direct healthcare for 25+yrs. We used to get an occasional patient that an insurance company would state was not “critical enough” and would require them to go home for treatment after they were stabilized. You could look for different travel insurance plans. World Nomads is another one.

[Rice]

allen8106 wrote:
Check out the Escapees club. I believe they offer some plans for full timers.

They don't offer major medical insurance that has access to a nationwide network, which is what fulltimers want.