Hi y'all. I thought I would start a thread about Bunac, and more specifically insurance for Bunac folk. As anyone who has looked into Bunac will know, their insurance is very very pricey & it covers you for most activities a human could want to do.
I have found a site that gives some alternatives to the Bunac policy and most seem quite reasonable....http://www.workingholidaytravelinsurance.com/bunac.htm

It has been suggested before that people could just buy 3 months cover & tell Bunac that they will be able to get provincial health cover after this time. This may work in other provinces, not it seems in Ontario....
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/...faq_dt.html#Q1

Are there any past Bunac folk out there who can share their experience? Or any new Bunac-ers for that matter?!

Any input would be appreciated

thats similar figures to what i was getting on moneysupermarket!

Well done on finding that site!
Guess ill be phoning bunac soon then

Would be interesting if anyone has had success with bunac accepting these policies?

Karen

fancy meeting you here

i only sat down to check my email!
Still here 15min later, told mum id be at her house half an hour ago!!

I waste sooo many hours on expats!!

informative hours i might add!!

Karen

your meant to be going home too!!!

Just racking the brain.

We took BUNAC insurance, but only for 4 months I think it was, but that was what our return flight was for - made sense to match them up.

Our plan was to test out Vancouver and then try and stay if we liked it. But we didn't tell BUANC this.

We got BC Health Cover plus additional medical insurance from work (but we both got proper professional jobs, not sure whether student jobs / traditional BUNAC jobs would do them same).

We also cashed in the return part of our flight.

We stayed in Canada on the rest of our BUNAC WP whilst transferring to BC PNP for when they expired.

Ok, let me try and understand! You bought 4 months Bunac insurance (to match flights) and ended up staying for the full 12 month term. I'm assuming Bunac were ok with this? Working on the basis that what they don't know won't hurt them. Did Bunac not ask why you were only 'staying' for 4 months? Or do they not mind. I guess it's our own business if we want to wing it for some of the time without any health insurance

Oh, and thanks for the reply btw!

I had a job offer in London that we weren't sure that we would return for.

Also if real jobs in Canada didn't work out or if we didn't like it here (although too short a time to really judge but first impressions mean a lot) then we would have done a ski season and returned home to job in London.

Just thinking about it now, we probably did 6 months - really can't remember.

We were covered under the BC Health Care after the first 3 months of working here and with additional medical insurance through our companies plans so we didn't risk not being insured.

I'm very boring about such things as insurance!

We never told BUNAC that we cashed in our return flights, that we stayed longer than our insurance and actually that we are still here.......BUNAC never asked.

It just seemed strange to be paying "travel" insurance for somewhere where we were making our home, were covered by local health care, plus top up from employers. The only thing I was worried about is if something had happened to us and we needed to be flown home e.g. serious car crash etc. But that would still be the case now.

My uncle died whilst we were still covered under the BUNAC insurance, but they wouldn't pay up for us to fly home for the funeral.

If we wanted to return back at the end of the 12 months we thought it was cheaper / easier to then book another flight with just insurance for that flight. Also we went through Zoom so couldn't have booked a return flight for the 12 months, as we were organising it all about 15 months ahead.

Sorry, it all seems so long ago now that it is hard to remember precise details hence the rambling.

Cheers for that, the rambling is appreciated! It helps put things in perspective, so thank you. Hopefully more folks will come along to give their inputs & experiences.

I thought the insurance was a rip off and only purchased the three months. One triage visit, one CAT scan and over $2000 later I wish I had got the full year's coverage.

Under the terms of the BUNAC you are not eligible for OHIP etc.

On a side note I got my OHIP card the other day- thanks to my shiny two year TWP.

Don't hate the player- hate the game.

Pah. I hate games. I guess I'll play along though I'll get my *possibly under-insured* self out to the big smoke soon enough.

ouch

yeah it sucks to be me sometimes. But since I've had the OHIP card I've turned into quite the hypochondriac.