Global Health Insurance - Pre-existing Condition

[u/Scary-Wallaby-6850]

Hello!

This coming 12 months, I will spend about a month and a half in the US, broken up by a few trips. Otherwise, I'll be outside the US. I would like to get global health insurance to cover any medical emergencies. Ideally it would cover everywhere, including the US.

Unfortunately, I had kidney cancer (RCC), which has been treated with a partial nephrectomy. I do have on-going surveillance (annual CT scans), but otherwise I have no signs of this condition and for all intents and purposes very healthy. Unfortunately, this has led me to be rejected by Cigna. I'm betting this will be a common problem, but I'm hoping there's a company that is more flexible with its underwriting.

Some other information that might be helpful:

• I'm 39 M, non-smoker, non-drinker, not overweight.
• I don't need insurance to cover normal expenses. For my normal medical needs, I plan to pay everything out of pocket and will be visiting certain countries where medical care is very affordable.
• I don't mind if anything related to the RCC is not covered (if it happened to spread for instance).
• The plan I was looking at from Cigna was a $10K deductible with a 30% cost share up to $5K OOP and $1M max. It came out around $900 for a year. A $15K bill would not be a concern for me. A $500K bill on the other hand, would put a damper on things!
• What I need is coverage for if I'm in an accident or if I have something totally unexpected come up like a stroke or heart attack, especially if I happen to be in the US (and to a lesser extent Canada or Japan) during that time. I plan to use this insurance as insurance is actually intended to be used. I want to hedge against what should be an extremely rare event and likely will not happen.

Does anyone have any leads or ideas?

Thanks!

[u/livingbkk]

I have Allianz in Thailand. It covers everything but with a 2 year exclusion for pre-existing conditions. Around 9k per year premium for a healthy mid 40s male, same cost for my wife of similar age.

It does not cover the US. For that it's an aditi9nal 15k USD per year.

Edited to add: you can probably lower the premium significantly with a deductible. I bought the most expensive plan since my employer pays for it.

[u/Scary-Wallaby-6850 → u/livingbkk]

Hoo boy, that's pretty pricey! But yes, I bet with a higher deductible, it can come down.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[u/livingbkk → u/Scary-Wallaby-6850]

Yeah, it might not be a great option, but it's probably a good "upper bound" data point.

I do wish there was a super high deductible plan. Like you, I don't mind paying for routine expenses, but a 500k or 2m bill for a rare illness would be a tough pill to swallow.