Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning to all. Craig Schillig here and this is
Safe Money. I'm here every Saturday to talk with our
listeners about financial strategies we use to manage and protect
assets safely. I've been an insurance agent for over twenty
four years. During that time, I've learned a few insurance strategies,
like using annuities as safe money harbors, or using cash
(00:23):
value life insurance to supplement retirement income. Just a reminder,
you can call our office at five six three three
three two two two zero zero if you'd like to
enroll into one of my virtual Medicare community meetings that
I do via Zoom. I give two every month every
(00:47):
month of the year. Typically it's the third week of
the month on a Tuesday and Thursday at ten am.
You can email me at craigat Craigshillig dot com and
I'll send you the Zoom code and that's c R
A I G at c R AI G S c
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H I L l ig dot com and I can
provide you the links for those codes. Today, I want
to talk to you about international travel medical insurance. Yes,
you need travel medical insurance when you leave the United States.
(01:38):
Why do I recommend geoblue you ask because this policy
pays for jet fuel. There are several travel insurance policies
out there that you can purchase from. When you go
buy airline tickets, United or Adelta offer them to you
trip interruption stuff of that nature, or if you're going
(01:59):
on a cruise or you're working with a travel agent,
they have several policies, but most of them will not
pay for jet fuel. Alliance USAA, I think there's even
I think the State Department even has a plan that
you can buy two. So please keep this in mind.
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You can't just leave the hospital in a full body
cast and go back to the airport and get on
a commercial aircraft in Paris and fly back to the
fly back to the United States. The airline won't let
you get on the plane. And that's why jet fuel
is very important piece of this overall contract. If you
need to be medically evacuated from an area and return
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to the US, that's what this policy is designed to do.
Most of us don't have a line of credit or
a credit card limit on our Visa or American Express
cards that's going to cover one hundred thousand dollars fuel
bill to use a private jet to come back to
the United States States. Most health sorry, most health insurance
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company plans will say that you have emergency coverage worldwide.
The underage sixty five health insurance policies and current Medicare
policies all say something to that effect. Then in the
frying print you will see something that says, in effect,
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you need to pay for everything. And then when you
get back home, you can submit your receipts for reasonable
and customary reimbursement. Good luck doing that with receipts during
a different language or a different currency. Does that clinic
or hospital location accept credit cards? Good luck going to
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a foreign ATM machine with drawing a couple grand for
a medical service when you're in the middle of North Africa.
I know you've seen stories from Mexico where the resort,
the local police, and the healthcare provider or hospital network
are all in cahoots together. A lot of locations in
Mexico won't take credit cards. They want cold, hard US currency.
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You may have great medical coverage in the United States,
but most of those benefits don't extend overseas. If you
need medical attention when you're traveling, it could be difficult
to find the right type of care, and you may
have no coverage and face unexpected medical bills, So why
take that chance? International healthcare coverage from Geoblue is designed
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to make it easy for you to access care while
traveling the world. These health insurance plans are specifically designed
for international travel. They cover important needs like medically necessary evacuations,
which can cost tens of thousands of dollars out of
your pocket and are typically not covered by any US
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medical plan, repatriation of remains, and import export issues. If
you've ever had to repatriate remains and you don't know
what that costs, twenty or thirty grand's not unusual. That's
an expensive proposition. The in house medical assistance team is
always just a click away on the app or on
(05:21):
a phone. You can reach them twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days
a year. The Geoblue mobile app helps you locate care
anywhere in the world, offers access to unlimited telemedicine visits,
It provides medicine equivalents. It also will alert you to
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local security threats from your local embassy, health issues, and
much much more. I've had clients use this service at
three am and Geoblue sent a doctor to their hotel room.
Some of all used the telemedicine app and did everything
from the privacy of their own room. The service then
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at a concierge deliver the medicine to their location. Coverage
with geo Blue is simple, convenient, comprehensive, and more affordable
than you might think. Plans started less than two dollars
a day, and for a seventy three year old it
may not be more than fourteen dollars a day, but
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again it's based on age for up to a million
dollars of total benefit. Take Geoblue with you and travel
with confidence. The most popular plans with options that cover
pre existing medical conditions as well. Some examples of these
are if you're an individual or a family traveling for
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a summer vacation. Maybe you're a college student going on
spring break, or you're a family or a college student
that's taking a long trip out of country for the holidays.
If you're a student or a teacher going abroad for
a semester. What about if you're a business traveler taking
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a single trip for their work to visit a client site.
Missionaries engage in religious, educational or service work lasting a
few months are also eligible. I'll share with you some
client examples that I've had come up in the past.
I have a client age thirty five now that is
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going to be gone from mid December to the beginning
of March. He's doing this for both work and a
family visit. He's going to Thailand, India, Dubai, Doa, and
then he's going to stop in Paris. His trip has
a total premium cost of two hundred and six dollars
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with a one million dollars of medical benefit coverage for
his entire trip. At two he'll pay more for that
for baggage charges than he would for the entire geoblue premium.
I have current clients that go to a timeshare in
Port of Vlorta, Mexico, every year. They typically go the
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first quarter January to April. I use if I use
the example of two senior age people in their early
seventies and they go on a three month trip, their
total premium is going to be less than eleven hundred dollars.
For that peace of mind, I've also had a family
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that did a three week trip in Europe. They went
to France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy. They even went to
Portugal for six adults and a three week trip. Their
total Geoblue premium cost was less than three hundred dollars. Now,
the younger you are, the cheaper the Geoblue premium is
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going to be. Another set of clients actually had had
to use this policy while they were in Mexico. In
their case, they were convinced that their drinks were drugged.
They had only had one drink that day, and fortunately
they were able to get back to a taxi and
go back to the hotel, but they were pretty near
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blackout status. They managed to call Geo Blue and Geo
Blue was able to get medical assistants through their contacts.
The medical team sent an independent doctor to the room
to treat them for what they thought was They thought
they had drinks spiked with rufees. They even requested a
blood draw and a blood test to see if they
(09:37):
could analyze what it was. When they got back to
the US, they actually did learn that, yes, their drinks
were spiked. No money had changed hands for any of
the services. Everything was handled through Geo Blue, and that
was at about eleven o'clock at night, so they were
pretty satisfied with that. You can easily access quality healthcare
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when you leave the US, from unlimited telemedicine to hospitalization
to evacuation. All travel medical plans provide essential coverage that
most domestic plans don't cover outside of the continental United States,
including medical evacuation and repatriation. Coverage for medically necessary COVID
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nineteen testing and treatments also included. Twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days
a year. You can consult with their telemedicine people from
anywhere in the world for no additional costs. You have
access to doctors and hospitals you know over one hundred
and ninety countries. You can get coverage all the way
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up to age ninety five. Plan options that include coverage
of pre existing conditions, no medical underwriting. You can get
discounts on a groups that'd be five or more travelers
or if it is a family, protections for dollars a
day and as little as five minutes. Now let's cover
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some of the plan and benefits that are offered through
this type of policy. There's two types of travel medical
plans that I generally deal with with Geo Blue. They're
called the voyager and the Trekker. I'll begin with the
voyager because that's what I run into the most. The
Trekker plan i'll run to run into as much because
(11:34):
you have to be there more than one hundred and
eighty days. So when you're talking about somebody who's taken
a six month trip or longer, sometime that's going to
be work related. And in those cases sometimes work will
pick up an international policy for that employee, so I
don't run into those Trekker policies as much. But eligibility
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for Voyager, the coverage for the link of the trip
can only be up to one hundred and eighty days
of coverage, so I can only go out six months.
You do need to have primary health insurance. Now, if
you don't, there may be some pre existing depending on
how you answer some of the few medical questions, so
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this sometimes may come into play here. It just depends.
For example, if you have a pending surgery, a treatment
coming up, or if you just got out of surgery
within ninety one hundred and twenty days, they may exclude that.
So some of those general health questions are kind of
come up and geoblue is not going to cover those
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types of events. There are discounts for groups of five
or more and you know a large family, you can
get discounts there. But the maximum benefit per insured person
is per policy period, so there's options you can get
the benefit amounts. The lowest benefit you can get is
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fifty thousand. You can get one hundred thousand of coverage,
five hundred thousand, or up to a million of benefit
per insured person per policy trip period. I don't recommend
the fifty thousand dollars benefit just because that may not
be enough to cover a jet fuel bill, especially if
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you're over in Europe, so just keep that in mind.
Most of my clients will buy the one hundred, five
hundred or million, and then we'll jump into deductibles here
per insured person per policy period, so your benefits are
one hundred, five hundred or million, but then you have
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a deductible. Now, most people go with the zero dollar
deductible because of them. That's easy, you don't have to
pay anything. You have first dollar coverage. That's fine, but
that also means that maybe a higher policy than if
you took a one hundred, two fifty or five hundred deductible.
Just keep that in mind. But most of my clients
go with a zero. But I do sell some policies
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where people will pay the five hundred dollars deductible because
they don't think they're gonna need it. Let's see, so
let's talk about inpatient and outpatient benefits. Benefits are paid
for covered expenses as follows up to the medical limit.
The geoblue will pay after your deductible is met. So
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if you're on a zero deductible, you get first dollar coverage.
But if you have a one hundred, two fifty or
five hundred deductible, you pay that first and then the
plan would pick up the rest. But surgery, anesthesia, in
hospital doctor visits, diagnostic testing, X rays, and labs, that's
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all going to be covered at one hundred percent under
these types of policies. If you have a doctor office visit,
whether it be virtual urgent care center or if you
walk into a hospital, X rays, lab work, anything built
by the attending physician, that's all covered at one hundred percent.
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So if you go to the hospital, surgeries are covered,
X rays, in hospital doctor visits, that's all covered at
one hundred percent. In patient medical emergencies, those are covered
at one hundred percent. If you need some sort of
ambulatory surgical center, so you break a bone, elbows, wrists, shoulders, knees, hips, ribs,
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that's all probably going to be done generally on an
outpatient ambulatory surgical center. Ambulance service. Whether it's a non
medical evacuation, that's covered up to one thousand dollars. Okay,
so that's non medical that'd be transferred from a facility
to another. Prescriptions, dental care, and physical therapy, the insurance
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the Geo Blue will pay after the deductibles met. Outside
the United States, outpatient prescription drugs or covered at one
hundred percent of reasonable charges up to only five thousand
dollars for medications there. Dental care covered due to injury
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is covered at one hundred percent for reasonable charges, with
a maximum benefit of five hundred dollars per trip period.
Dental care for relief of pain, they will cover one
hundred percent of reasonable charges with a maximum benefit of
two point fifty per trip period. What about physical and
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occupational therapy, You can have up to six visits per
trip period of insurance up to a high hundred dollars
maximum for those visits, travel assistance benefits. The insured would
waive the deductible on these items like accidental death and dismemberment.
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The maximum benefit they would pay would be the principal
sum of fifty thousand dollars if your death was due
to an accidental death or dismemberment. They do cover repatriation
of remains. Again, before I said this is expensive, the
maximum benefit they would cover for this can be up
to twenty five thousand dollars. I've seen some repatriation of
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medical remains brought back to the US that can be
actually north of twenty five k. But that's between dealing
with import export, dealing with customs, the transportation, the jet fuel,
the pilot, the plane, all that stuff. You can't just
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put that in a ups box and ship it overseas.
Emergency medical transportation, the maximum benefit per period for all
evacuees would be up to a half million dollars. Emergency
family travel arrangements are also built into this plan. You
can get a maximum benefit per trip period of up
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to twenty five hundred for the cost of one economy
round trip airfare ticket to the place of the hospital confinement.
That'd be for one person, so i e. The surviving
spouse or closest relative. Loss, Baggage and personal effects coverage.
The policy would cover a maximum benefit of five hundred
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per trip period and is limited to one hundred dollars
maximum benefit per bag or personal effect a post trip
departure interruption transportation the maximum benefit is one thousand dollars
per trip period. Post departure trip interruption quarantine coverage. We
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have this back at during the COVID days. You can
have lodging and incidentals covered at a maximum benefit of
fifty dollars per day up to ten days if we're
involved in any hazardous activities. Benefits from claims resulting from
downhill alpine skiing, scuba diving at a depth of twenty
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meters or less that's certified by a paddy or ANYIU required,
or diving under the supervision of a certified instructor. The
insurer would pay after the deductibles met a maximum benefit
of twenty five thousand dollars. Additional services that are included
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with all the plans. You do have a Geoblue app,
you can use the telemedicine app within that, you have
a global service center customer support. They're available twenty four
hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and
sixty five days a year. The digital tools included also
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have you can do whether it be audio or video,
medical translations, health and safety alerts with the local embassy
or state department, and much much more. You also have
access to their Global Service Center Critical assessment team that
would determine if a medical evacuation is necessary. So why
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would one choose Geoblue? One is peace of mind. Even
if you're already enrolled in a domestic health plan, your
coverage is limited when you travel abroad. In fact, your
plan may not pay to have you safely evacuated if
you're critically ill. In addition to administrative and logistical challenges,
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these situations can cost an unprotected traveler hundreds of thousands
of dollars. With Geo Blue plans, you can travel with
peace of mind knowing you're covered no matter where you go.
Support is just to call or click away. They have
flexible plan options. They have plans to cover every international
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need from leisure travel and expatriate to mission and workplace options,
and you might be be surprised by how affordable coverage
can be. They have digital tools. The Geoblue mobile app
puts access to comprehensive coverage right in the palm of
your hand. You can get detailed profiles of select primary
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care physicians and specialists, as well as a broad range
of hospitals pharmacies in Dennis. You can look up medical
translations and medical and medicine equivalents to get directions all
rate from the app. Do you have access to quality
care with Geoblue? Leaving the US doesn't mean leaving behind
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familiar medical care if you need it. While the Global
Medical Network includes hand selector providers in one hundred and
ninety countries, many of whom are Western trained in English speaking,
you also have their freedom to choose any international doctor
or facility for services. You can also talk with a
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doctor anywhere in the world just from the mobile app. Understand,
Like all insurance products, some exclusions and disclaimers do apply.
You can become a Geoblue member simply by calling or
emailing me with your contact info, dates of birth, those
traveling with you, the trip dates, and your destination. Most
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of my regular clients call me after they purchase their
plane tickets. However, I can sell you a policy, I
can't sell you policy more than six months in advance,
I can email you an estimate that lets you change
deductible or the benefit amount that fits your budget. You
can pick the plane in deductible Online you can handle
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payment information and signature authorization. Then you just download the app.
Geoblue will email you the policy, the health insurance cards,
and the app information. Remember this is coverage for outside
the United States. If you're cruising to Alaska, this will
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only be valid when you go into port in Canada.
Your current health insurance policy will trump this coverage if
you're still on US soil. If you're on a sailboat
in the US Virgin Islands, this would only apply if
you're outside the US jurisdiction. I've had clients use these
services in Mexico, Europe, and the Far East, so please
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remember Geoblue goes along with your passport. If you're taking
your passport somewhere, then you should take geoblue with you.
Just a friendly reminder. I give monthly virtual meetings regarding medicare.
I use two companies every month. It's usually on the
(24:10):
third week of the month. I do one on well Mark.
I talk about supplements within that meeting. I then also
talk about a Medicare advantage plan from United Healthcare. Most
of those are on the third week, Tuesday and Thursday
morning at ten am. If you'd like more information about that,
(24:30):
please call my office at five six three three three
two two two zero zero and I'll send you the
zoom meeting codes. You're also welcome to email me at
Craig at Craigshillig dot com. That's cr AI G at
(24:52):
cr AI G S c h I L L I
G dot com. I'd be happy to send you the
zoom link meeting codes. This is Craig Schillig with Safe
Money