Medical Trip and Medical Procedure Insurance for Medical Tourists

Why is it so hard to find?

Standard Medical Travel Insurance

Travel for medical treatment is not covered by routine medical travel insurance because it specifically excludes coverage of “pre-existing” conditions and traveling for treatment.  Consequently, it will not cover any treatment expenses, or cost of air ambulance in the event emergency medical evacuation to home country is needed.

Only four companies in the world offer medical travel insurance that doesn’t exclude people traveling for treatment, and only two of those are in the U.S. and therefore available to U.S. citizens.

We interviewed Jim Krampen, co-founder and Executive Officer of Seven Corners Inc., the only company offering this product online and available immediately – the whole application process takes less than five minutes.

“Our policy does not exclude traveling for treatment,” said Krampen, “We know you are going for that purpose.  All other travel policies anywhere in the world — they will not cover you if you are traveling for treatment.”

“We offer a comprehensive Medical Tourism Insurance that includes Medical Complications Coverage, Trip Cancellation Coverage, Medical Coverage, Medical Evacuation Coverage – all in one plan,” he said.

A Unique Medical Complication Insurance

“It is the first plan of its type to cover medical complications after treatment while abroad or after your return home,” said Krampen, “The name of the product is Bordercross Worldwide.”

Rates are in direct relationship to the procedure risk and foreseeable complications cost.  This type of coverage is capped at a fixed benefit amount.

Medical Complication Insurance vs. Malpractice Insurance.

Medical Complication Insurance is not insurance for medical malpractice, which is an issue of liability.

A lot of consumers tend to think they are one and the same.  Obviously if you have a complication you can sue your doctor, but that does not mean that malpractice was involved,” said Krampen, “However Medical Complication Insurance does not correct the surgical procedure if there has been malpractice,”

Cost for Medical Trip and Procedure Insurance

The cost of an individual policy will depend on the cost of your trip and medical treatment and your selection of $10,000, $20,000 or $50,000 in medical complication coverage.

In general if it cost you $20,000 for everything — your travel, your accommodations, your procedure, etc., and you want to buy the best coverage they offer to cover the complications, the $50,000 coverage, it’s going to be about 12% so that’s $2,400.
“So you would pay $20,000 to your facilitator and then another $2,400 to us to cover everything; the trip cancellation, the travel medical and the complications insurance,” said Krampen, “If you were only to buy the $10,000 complication coverage it would be closer to about 7%.”

Insurance products can only be sold by licensed agents.  “So how we save people money is that we distribute the product through the tour and facilitator websites whose prices are less than those quoted on our wholesale site,” said Krampen.

“It’s 10% cheaper for you to go through a facilitator than if you went directly to Seven Corners, “ explained Krampen, “And we prefer that people go through a medical tourism facilitator so that the facilitator can explain everything to their clients.”

“You can call us and we can walk you through how to find a facilitator who knows how this works,” said Krampen, “and we participating facilitators listed on our site.”

The Value of Medical Complication Insurance for Medical Tourists

A story shared by Krampen:

“One of our former clients is a woman in her mid-50’s, employed by a very small employer who did not offer health insurance.  When she was 19 she was in a car accident and fractured her hip.

She’d always had issues with her hip and finally she couldn’t take it anymore.  Her hip deteriorated more and more so she looked into medical tourism and found a facilitator to get her to India.

She and her husband went to India for a hip replacement that cost a total $13,000.  The same operation in Texas would have cost her $60,000.  She purchased complication medical insurance from us at the $10,000 maximum.

The trip went fine, she got the surgery and she came back home.  Two weeks later she started running a high fever, doesn’t know what’s going on and the doctor says she has an infection.  It ended up being a staph infection but it was untreatable because the staph infection was on the stainless steel hip device.

So we paid for the procedure in Texas where they opened her back up and they cleaned off and sterilized the stainless steel device and got rid of the staph.

Unfortunately the corrective procedure cost $30,000.  In hindsight, of course, she would have been wise to select the $50,000 complication insurance which would have covered everything.”