What are the risks of working abroad without insurance?
Many of us are guilty of thinking “it won’t happen to me” when considering the health risks involved when traveling abroad, leading us to question whether to even bother taking out health insurance. However, sudden and unforeseen health problems happen and nobody is exempt from experiencing them. If you need medical care in a foreign country but don’t have travel health insurance, there are several issues you could face.
- Receiving high healthcare fees
In many countries across the world, hospitals, urgent care clinics, and doctor’s surgeries operate privately, which means they require direct payment for their care and treatment. It isn’t uncommon for them to charge foreigners hundreds of dollars for a check-up and thousands for treatment.
- Being denied access to healthcare
Since many healthcare providers in foreign countries are private, they have a right to deny treatment to individuals without health insurance. This protects them from potential losses from patients that can’t pay up, but it can be detrimental to those requiring medical treatment.
- Being denied healthcare that isn’t urgent
Even if healthcare is accessible for foreigners in the countries they want to visit, some healthcare services will deny treatment to foreigners without insurance if the problem is not urgent or life threatening. This can make it difficult to find access to antibiotics and other pharmaceutical treatments.
