3 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Taking Out A Spanish Medical Insurance Policy

by Liz Seyi Digital marketing manager

As brilliant as the Spanish public healthcare system is widely seen as being, if you are an expatriate living in this fabulously sun-drenched part of Europe, you might still wish to take out a private medical insurance policy here.

So, if you’re currently looking for a Medical Insurance Broker In Spain, here are a few questions that we would advise you to ask yourself before making any firm decisions.

What do I need health insurance for?

Would you like to benefit from quicker treatment than you would be able to expect if you depended purely on Spain’s public healthcare system? Maybe you wish to have greater choice with regard to specialists, consultants and surgeons? Or perhaps you need to take out a private insurance policy in order to access Spanish healthcare at all?

Whatever your exact circumstances and needs, it helps to be clear about precisely why you are looking to purchase medical insurance in Spain, as this will be instrumental in guiding you towards the most suitable policy.

Do you have pre-existing conditions that may affect your search for a policy?

Medical insurance policies can sometimes have exclusions for certain pre-existing conditions, which are generally defined as physical or mental conditions for which medical advice, diagnosis, care or treatment is recommended or received prior to the policy start date.

The likelihood of such exclusions in a policy applying to you may depend on such factors as the type and severity of any pre-existing conditions you have, as well as whether a given condition is ongoing.

How will the policy be underwritten?

There are three different ways in which an individual medical insurance policy can be underwritten; these are full medical underwriting, moratorium and continuing personal medical exclusions, the latter also known as CPME or Switch.

Full medical underwriting, for instance, involves you being asked to complete a medical questionnaire and to any declare any conditions that you may have had over your entire lifetime.

The moratorium type of underwriting, meanwhile, will not require you to complete a medical questionnaire, althoughyou might need to provide details about your medical history. For example, some insurers will ask you if you have had any specific conditions such as heart or cancer related and you will be required to declare these. The insurer won’t cover any medical conditions of yours that existed in the previous years. However, some of these conditions might become eligible for cover, though, after a continuous two-year period, provided that you have not had symptoms, received treatment, taken medication, had tests or received advice from your GP or specialist.

Finally, transferring between insurers with no break in cover may entitle you to cover on a Switch basis, which involves the new insurer accepting you with the same underwriting as applied to your previous policy. Conditions apply, of course, including any specific exclusions you had on your old policy also being present in your new policy. Also when transferring or ‘switching’ from one policy to another, they need to be of a similar level of cover.

As you can see, there are quite a few things that you might need to think about when seeking out the ideal policy via a medical insurance broker in Spain – so you shouldn’t rush through the process of deciding on the right product for you.

Get in touch with your nearest Ibex office, in fact, and you can receive face-to-face advice and guidance, designed to ensure that you ultimately purchase only the best-tailored health insurance policy for your specific circumstances and needs.