Travel Medical Insurance for U.S. Residents
Whether you need travel medical insurance when visiting California depends largely on where you’re coming from. In the U.S., most regular health insurance policies provide coverage to customers when they’re traveling within the 50 states. Generally, that coverage extends specifically to emergency services: the care you need to get you back in shape to travel home again. It may not cover a surgery that could legitimately be postponed. Some health plans also make a distinction between urgent care and emergency care. So, before you take off on a trip or decide whether you need to take out a separate travel medical policy, it’s worth calling your health insurer to find out what kind of services will be reimbursed under your policy—particularly if you belong to an HMO or if your plan has separate reimbursement schedules for in-network and out-of-network providers.
If you’re coming to California from outside the U.S., travel medical insurance is something you should seriously consider. You’d like to think that there’s cross-border cooperation on matters as serious as medical care, but unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Medical providers in the U.S. don’t accept health insurance that’s issued in other countries, even if it’s government-sponsored. Medical bills in the U.S., including those for emergency services, are among the highest worldwide. And individuals, not the state, are responsible for paying them. When you purchase travel medical insurance, you can expect your policy to reimburse you for the cost of care you receive in the U.S. The coverage is reassuringly broad, too: emergency transport, diagnostic services, hospitalization, surgery, prescription medicines, and office visits are typically covered services.