I now legally live in Spain, yet I retain my worldwide UK medical policy. Is this OK?

Worldwide medical policies generally require policyholders to maintain official residency in the country of purchase and strictly exclude treatments not officially approved in that home country.

Can I move abroad and keep my worldwide medical plan?

While global health insurance plans focus on medically necessary, standardised care, standalone critical illness policies pay out a lump-sum cash benefit upon diagnosis, allowing Customer X to spend the funds on experimental clinical trials.

Enforcing Country of Residence Clauses: Global medical insurance plans are legally tied to your primary country of residence.

Residency requirement:

See t&c's terms and conditions indicating you must legally reside in the country where you bought the policy.

Coverage termination:

Moving permanently abroad without notifying the insurer usually voids the contract and potentially leaves you exposed in a medical emergency.

Restricting Unapproved and Unrecognised Treatments:

Medical policies do not cover cutting-edge treatments that lack formal local regulatory approval in the country where the policy was issued. An advanced technology treatment may have been adopted by the Spanish Health Authorities but may not yet have been approved in UK , or vice versa

Regulatory approval:

Treatments must be approved by the home country's medical board.

Standard of care:

Insurers only fund treatments recognised as safe, established and approved by the National Health Ministry in the country where the policy was issued.

Experimental exclusion:

Therapies labelled as experimental or investigational are universally declined. Many people diagnosed with a serious medical issue may decide to proceed with an advanced medical procedure, believing that they can reclaim the cost afterwards.

Often, if in doubt about the coverage, it is best to ask your Insurer to provide a pre-approval of treatment and cost, which will bring to light any issue about whether the policy really does cover it.

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Global medical policy:

This type of policy operates on an indemnity basis, and it directly reimburses specific hospital bills for treatments recognised and approved in the country in which the policy was issued.

Because clinical trials are classified as experimental, the insurer contractually rejected the claim.

You should always ask your insurer before proceeding with a clinical trial.

Also, different countries have different drugs registered, so a chemotherapy-type drug may be recognised in Spain, but if your UK Global policy sees that it is not an approved UK drug, then you may end up having to pay for the treatment yourself.

Critical illness policy:

This is normally a standalone policy that pays a lump-sum cash benefit immediately upon diagnosis of a covered illness (like cancer or stroke). Once Customer X received the cash, the insurer lost oversight of the funds. Customer X successfully used this cash to independently finance the trial.

In Spain, they have a different type of critical illness policy that will cover transport and hotel costs for the patient and partner so they can travel to world-renowned clinics and hospitals anywhere around the world and have access to the most advanced specialist care and treatments, with the Insurer paying for flights and ongoing accommodation.

Customer X opted for treatment at the New York Mt Sinai under the DKV Munidcare medical policy, providing up to 1 million euros of costs in year one.

Many people live abroad full-time but retain a healthcare policy from another country. Most who do this are not aware of the clauses that will easily void their medical coverage if the insured discovers that they are not a resident in the country where the policy was taken up.

For more information about any level of medical policy, call Francis at Tailor Made Healthcare Spain.

If you would like to see some prices of Spanish Global Healthcare Insurance or a Spanish Critical illness policy, then please go to our price request page.

Francis Payne

Tailor Made Healthcare Spain.