Lion in Winter

I'm dealing with covid-caused job loss in the US, and along with that (as of the end of this year as per my severance agreement) I will no longer be part of my company's group health insurance plan. Not sure what my situation in January will be yet, but the choice as to whether continue the group coverage I now have but with me paying all of the premium (an eye-watering 2k per month for family coverage) or going onto the open market where coverage for self, spouse and son is not likely to be that much cheaper unless of course I"m dirt poor by that time in which case the premium is likely to be closer to the employee percentage I've been paying (c.$600 per month) bur for a lesser plan (ie I would pay more costs).

Anyway, I currently have my son on our plan since he is a full time student and that means he can be on the plan until 26. He's only 20 now, no health issues. He spends most of his time in the UK now, so one thing I'm considering is booting him off the plan, which would save a fair bit, and getting him travel insurance for when he visits the US in case he breaks something or whatever. I can't find approx costs for such insurance other than by getting on every company's email list and having them bombard me for ever, so while I think about whether this makes sense it would be really helpful to have an idea of what such insurance might coast from a couple of weeks worth to, maybe, three months should he ever decided to spend a summer holiday here while we are still based here.

Any info appreciated.

christmasoompa

Sorry to hear about your job loss. You can use a website like gocompare.com or confused.com to compare the price for travel insurance policies without needing to contact the company directly.

Ours is about £180 for an annual policy for the four of us, with winter sports cover too, and £25M coverage for medical, if that helps give you an idea at all? His would presumably be much cheaper for just him. One thing you may find though is that travel insurance won't cover Covid related medical costs now though, so do check the small print.

And if you do decide to go down that route, get him to buy it through a website like Quidco or Topcashback, he'll usually get money back as well.

HTH.

Lion in Winter

Wait,only 180 pounds a year for medical coverage for 4 people? For travel into the US?

I need to move now

Thanks for the recommendation on the websites though.

christmasoompa

Yep, ours is a worldwide policy as we used to travel lots before lovely Covid arrived! It's for full travel insurance, so covers baggage, cancellation, valuables etc too. If you do a quick quote on one of the websites above it'll give you an idea at least but I can't imagine it'll be more than about £50 for single trip cover for just one person.

Lion in Winter

I'm all over it like a rug.

Thank you very much.

christmasoompa

No probs. Out of interest, I've just checked the current policy wording for the company we're with, and although we're covered for Covid under ours until the expiry date (which specifically includes pandemics), they've now made it an exclusion.

So you may struggle to find travel insurance that will cover Covid related claims. I did see mention somewhere of being able to buy specific Covid policies though, so you could look in to that as well maybe? If not, then you may find it's safer to leave your son on your policy just in case.

Best of luck, hope a fabulous new job materialises soon.

Lion in Winter

I'll check, thanks. Premium costs are outrageous. Keeping my son on my current policy means about an extra 500 dollars per month in premium. Stupid bloody system.

rebs

One thing to perhaps consider with your plan - if your son were to fall ill whilst visiting you, his travel insurance may well be keen to repatriate him back to UK and the financially less onerous NHS.

But maybe as a stop gap while you are between jobs, it might be worth the risk?

Lion in Winter

This is true, but at some point I have to accept that he's grown up (sort of) and if the UK is where he wants to base himself then he and we have to proceed accordingly. As a healthy 20-year-old the odds of illness are luckily pretty low. Accidents can't be predicted of course, but at least he's not a skydiver or anything. If it weren't for the employment/income crunch, I would leave things as they are. People with no experience of the US have a hard time crediting how much of an issue health insurance can be.

1speedy

Hi, I know you didn't ask about this but just to let you know about the Cobra vs the exchange insurance. I too lost my job last year and went on Cobra, we had Anthem PPO the premium was pretty good $1200 for the 2 of us, this year I was able to get onto Medicare so we looked around for my wife on the CA exchange and got her on Blue Shield of CA all sounded good until she contacted her 3 main doctors, specialists sure, pulmonary, neurologist and ENT not as though she saw them very often but none of them accept the insurance from the exchange all said the same thing they don't get paid very much from them compared to regular company plans and so they don't accept those individual plans.

So needless to say there isn't too much we can do about that now but just bear in mind if you have any doctors you like check that they accept the individual exchange plans if you can afford it and like your current health plan with Cobra then best to stick with it, you might save $ on the individual plans but it is not good if you can't see the doctors you have or want to see.

Englishmum

Lion In Winter: check out Battleface insurance for your UK based son. It’s been recommended by Martin Lewis from www.moneysavingexpert.com and is originally for people (eg. Journalists, medics, relief workers, students etc.) travelling to war zones and covers areas where travel is advised by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and other governments for essential and non-essential travel. Covid-19 is covered for medical expenses for customers under the age of 59. See here:

www.battleface.com (you can scroll down the home page for more information and it has 5* TrustPilot reviews.

It must surely be less expensive than being under your own insurance! As someone pointed out above, if necessary he would need to have a UK address in case of repatriation if needed to be medi-Vacced (hopefully not necessary!) rather than a US address where they may decline to offer insurance coverage.

Hope this helps!

Lion in Winter

Thank you both, only just saw this.