z0s0

I'm just scouting around to work out what our options are for health insurance when we arrive next month.

We normally wouldn't bother with private health insurance (we don't here in Australia) but as we will not be working / paying into the Spanish social system we will need to pay for our own cover.

We're mainly interested in hospital cover for emergencies; we're happy to pay to visit doctors, dentists, etc.

Something like this looks about right (or maybe even too much cover):
http://www.sanitas.es/sanitas/seguro...men/index.html

My Spanish-legalese is limited, so it's going to be a bit tricky for me to determine which plans cover what scenarios. And indeed if we meet eligibility requirements - it'll take some time to get an NIE, residencia, etc, and we would like cover sorted out pretty quickly.

Sanitas also offers this "expat product":
http://www.healthplanspain.com/sanit...n-classic.html

Which seems to offer less cover for more money, presumably for the pleasure of an English language website! At least it would be easy to organise ;-)

Thoughts / opinions / recommendations?

Thanks,
Jules

whitelinen

Which area are you going to live in?

some companies are better in some areas and not others.

z0s0

Good point, sorry! Barcelona.

whitelinen

I have been with Sanitas for many years and have never had a problem other than trying to speak to anyone in English when calling their office. I have had operations in two different hospitals several visits to the doctors and also specialists and received excellent treatment.

Just looked on their website and they have plenty of facilities for urgencias.

In their handbook it lists specialist that speak English, but none that I have used have ever been able to do so but I am Valencia, maybe Barcelona is better.

Mitzyboy

Sanitas is fine, I was with them for 4 years or so
I only used them a couple of times for specialist consultations and both times excellent.

z0s0

What we're really looking for, I guess, is something that's really just covering emergencies; hospitalisation, etc. We're quite happy to pay full whack for our (rare) visits to doctors, dentists, etc.

I wonder if such a thing exists.