Travel insurance a good idea for first months?

[timeforeverything 3]

Hello! My family is finally moving back to the US (I am the USC, so are our 2 kids, husband just approved for IR1 visa). I haven't lived in the US for about 10years so I feel very out of touch.....

I have been thinking about how to handle health insurance for the first few months.  We will be on a very tight budget and I am really worried about someone in my family getting sick before we have got set up with work and health insurance.  In the past for our visits to the US we had travel health insurance.  I am considering if that would be a good option for the first 2 months while we are back getting life set up, or if there is a better option. 

Thanks for any input!

 

[Boiler 46,336]

When you are resident in the US you would buy Travel Insurance to go to other countries, does not cover you when you are in the US.

[Georgia16 2,858]

We had bought insurance from the day we landed to the day we got added to my husbands insurance after we got married.

 

2 days after we arrived we actually needed it. My son got a bad shot at a health care center and ended up at the ER with ambulance.

 

Now the insurance did not cover it all far from but it did cover a piece of it which was nice for us.

The company we used really sucked but I'm glad we had some.

[timeforeverything 3]

  On 3/11/2017 at 3:32 PM, Georgia16 said:

We had bought insurance from the day we landed to the day we got added to my husbands insurance after we got married.

 

2 days after we arrived we actually needed it. My son got a bad shot at a health care center and ended up at the ER with ambulance.

 

Now the insurance did not cover it all far from but it did cover a piece of it which was nice for us.

The company we used really sucked but I'm glad we had some.

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Do you mind if I ask what company you had the insurance with? Even a crappy company is better than nothing I guess

[rasaco 39]

Since you yourself are a US Citizen, just make sure you check with the plan whether they can cover you.  As Boiler mentioned, many plans won't cover you in your own country.  Many plans will let you sign up even if they don't actually cover you, so you don't want to be surprised if you find out in an emergency that what you bought won't actually work.  For my husband, when he came over as my fiancé, I got him a plan from https://www.visitorscoverage.com/

 

We luckily never had to use it, so I can't tell you how convenient it may or may not be, but it gave us peace of mind for a few months until we were married and could get him a plan on the Marketplace.  But I'm pretty sure those plans would only work for your family, not for you since you're a USC.

[Boiler 46,336]

There are new immigrant policies, ####### but better than nothing.

[Georgia16 2,858]

  On 3/11/2017 at 5:17 PM, timeforeverything said:

Do you mind if I ask what company you had the insurance with? Even a crappy company is better than nothing I guess

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Seven corners 

[Thesmiths2016 117]

I always travel with world nomads insurance. Its a cheaper backpacker type insurance but covers the basics, emergencies, lost luggage and so forth.  I know that when I sign up it asks what country I'm a citizen of (not resident of) and when I was in Australia I still had to sign up as a NZ citizen on a NZ plan. SO what this tells me is hopefully they would cover me when moving to the USA until I get citizenship.  It might be worth contacting world nomads and seeing if this is the case.  As someone else mentioned above, do check that you're covered, don't just assume cos they let you sign up.

I'll be looking at this myself because it'll take some time to work out the system there.

My 8 month old daughter is a dual citizen but has never been to the USA, so I need to find the same out for her too!  She's a whole different situation because she's a citizen of both but has both passports so she has choices.  Let me know what you find out if you do end up contacting them, and I'll do s the same

 

[bcking 3,157]

As others have said, you can't use "travel insurance" if you are going to be living in the US. The insurance company will go looking for reasons to exclude you, and that will be an obvious one.

 

That also goes for your family members who aren't citizens. If they are coming here on a permanent resident visa, then the act of flying here and passing through immigration establishes themselves as a "resident" here. They are officially immigrating to the USA on that flight, so they can't purchase "travel insurance" that covers vacations for them to travel "home".

 

That being said of course it would be smart if you have a family including young children to have some coverage. However I will say that while it would be nice for the little things, if unfortunately your child has to be admitted to the hospital for something major the social workers should be able to get the child "emergency Medicaid" which would retroactively cover that hospitalization (I'm not a social worker, but I'm a Pediatric Hospitalist). I've had patients who had just moved to the US (legally) who had no insurance and we got them insurance. Heck we even had kids just visiting the US as tourists who we got insurance.

 

Do either of you have a job lined up already or are you both coming without jobs? If you have no job/start date then definitely pick something up since you have no idea how long it will be.