simon2017

Every individual circumstance is different but what I've done is maintained my medical insurance in my home country, so that if cancer/heart etc occur I'd go back to my home country to be around family/friends, and am using Malay insurance to cover the non life threatening situations.
Might be worth looking at as an alternative to expensive expat insurance. In my case a cheaper option.

spouse of scouse

Hi Simon. Would an advantage of having expat insurance be that it would cover you for medical repatriation to your home country? I was just thinking that if something occurred that left you with severe disabilities (such as a stroke) and you were unfit to travel via normal methods, then you'd have no option but to rely on your Malaysian health insurance? Medical repatriation is hellishly expensive.

simon2017

That certainly would be an advantage but if something like that happened I'd have to use Malaysian health cover. I don't know what expat insurance costs but I'm using Australia highest hospital/dental/physio/extras etc cover which costs me around AUD 3,300 pa and Malay insurance at RM 1100 pa, so all up around RM11k pa. That Australian cover includes things like knee/hip replacements which I'm not sure any expat or Malay insurance policy would cover. I just had a hip replacement in Australia which had hospital cost of around AUD18k (RM50k) ... all covered by insurance.

Flyguy

Expat(riate) Insurance is an Insurance policy that provides cover both inside and outside your home country. It is usually required while living and working abroad where local cover may not be available, or maybe insufficient. It can be a Global Cover policy, or may have some countries excluded (typically the US, because of high med costs).

Epicurious

Personally I find the annual limits on local policies much too low (typically RM150K) because I quite often travel to high cost countries. So, I've been looking at international health insurers:

Cigna - my current insurer. No claims experience, but the reviews on Trustpilot are just terrible. The premium has risen a lot for the coming year.

Regency for Expats - Reasonable value, but can't find much about them in the way of reviews. They have all of 66 Exclusions listed, including 'manual labour' which they do not define. I don't work, but how about moving my own furniture around, or gardening?

Aetna, William Russell, Foyer Global, April International - all much more expensive than the above.

Pacific Cross - the cheapest international policy I can find, particularly if I take a deductible and some area limits. I know they have a long-standing presence in Thailand, but no offices here in MY. They do have direct-pay agreements with a few hospitals, including Gleneagles in KL. Does anyone know anything good or bad about Pacific?

Flyguy

Hi Epicurious. I don't know Pacific Cross. I once had Blue Cross cover in Hong Kong and they had a great 'headline' cover of 5M USD - but hidden away in the small print is a limit of 120HKD PER ILLNESS! That equates to 15,000USD - then you're out on yer ear! Ridiculous, and dangerous. I know of one Philipino colleague who ended up dead from cancer and left his poor family with a bill for 350K USD. So I don't recommend Blue Cross to anyone in HKG!

Has anyone on here had a local policy with Prudential?
I've been warned off their Expat policy, but their local policy seems one of the best on the market.

Epicurious

Thanks for the tipoff, but as far as I can tell Blue Cross and Pacific Cross seem to be different companies:
https://www.bluecross.com.hk/en/Home/Index
https://www.pacificcross.com/about-u...-globally.html

IanBlakeley

Ref pre-existing although not here on MM2H we've taken out local insurance with AIA, think they insure until you reach 100 but the premiums do rise steeply after 67 so it may not be affordable. Both of us had pre-existing conditions, my wife as with many middle aged folks was on blood pressure and cholesterol medications I had damage to my left lung from a diving incident. We had to have a medical, they saw the scarring I had already told them about and I guess because it was trauma not disease insured me at normal rates. The were unhappy with my wife's ECG so we had to get a report from a cardiologist he was firmly of the opinion it was the drugs that caused the odd behaviour gave her a stress test and the all clear. After a couple of follow up explanations she did get her insurance too. What we missed out on was the slight saving of a joint policy where the premium is set on the youngest, we have a policy each because of the time to get her medical I had to sign up before my opportunity ran out and would have had to start the process again.

Epicurious

Looking at their brochure for Senior Med, the lifetime claim limit is RM225K. I don't think that would go very far if you had a major illness or severe accident.

IanBlakeley

Wow, think our AIA was similar annually but we pay an additional sum to get it bumped up to RM1 million.

hnd

lacmac

I have been with William Russell which I found to be very good, customer service was great. I also have a pre existing condition which was excluded for cover but everything else was fine. I made one claim, when my mother died in UK they refunded me the travel cost within 2 weeks.

I have now changed to Now health insurance, they offer a no claims discount. I am 49yrs old and it cost about £1500 per year, William Russel was sbout £1800.