TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Health insurance options for travel to island

What do most people do for health insurance when traveling to the island? When I was younger, I never really thought about it, or did anything. Now, I think it would be a wise option.

I know that if I do the airbnb route, they offer insurance, but I have not read up enough on it to know if it is a viable and good option, or if I should find a better option.
Just curious what all the world travelers use? Thanks.

Scotty--we always purchase travel insurance through Insure My Trip. We always buy a comprehensive plans, which includes medical insurance and medical evac, which are the two most important things to US, personally. You can decide what types of insurance are important to you, in what amounts, and what is not important to you. There is also trip cancellation and interruption insurance, etc, as part of the comprehensive plan. If you book Insure my Trip through the link here on TTOL, we get a small commission and your cost is the same.

I'll take a look into it. Thanks.

Is there a company that you use more often than another on this site? Sorry to ask so many questions. There are so many companies to choose from, I don't know if one is better than another or not. I just like to see what other people have used in the past.Thanks again.

As I read this thread I noticed the banner addfor SkyMed a sponsor at the top of the page.

Skymed is also a sponsor, but they ONLY handle medical evac insurance. The original poster was asking about health insurance.

Scotty--on the Insure My Trip website, we put in parameters, and it pulls up a list of companies, and then I eliminate them till I find the one I want. For example, different companies have what I consider to be unacceptably low limits for stuff like medical evac and medical coverage. And some are just too expensive. We often have frequent flyer airline tickets, so even if we had to cancel, we could cancel the tickets and get the miles back, so our trip cancellation cost for us is fairly low for SXM. When we went to South Africa, things were totally different, in terms of what our potential exposure was. It just depends on what is important to you.

We will be using FF miles also. It will be the expense of our room for 6 weeks. That will tally around $10K is what I'm thinking. I guess I should just look into buying a place when I'm there. It can't be that much more expensive then renting overall.
I do have med evac, but I don't know if what we have will work like our health insurance where it doesn't cover outside of the country. I'll have to check it out.
Thanks again.

OK best wishes.

Carol, will be using American FF miles. What’s the policy on canceling a trip….thanks…Dave

As of right now, you can cancel and get miles back into your account. Who knows if they might change the rules tomorrow. The last I knew, Delta did not allow you to cancel and get miles back.

From experience with AA you can cancel and miles go back into your account and fees refunded to your original method of payment.

AA still lets you. I just had to do that a couple months ago.

I am probably over-insured. I have an annual policy with SkyMed and I also have an annual travel policy with Allianz, which includes med evac.

Same here

We buy an annual policy with GeoBlue. Around $400 total for two of us. Includes health and evac. Does not include trip insurance but we travel on JB miles and we don’t pay for our room or car until we get there so not much exposure for us. Both hospitals on the island are in the GeoBlue network as are many doctors.

Where do you stay that you don't have to pay until you get to SXM?

We get our insurance from Trawick and have used them for many trips $229 for our two week visit and decent coverage

Tried to attach a PDF of the policy info but the attach manager would not let me....no trip insurance but great medical ($1 million evac coverage per person)

Two years ago, I had the "opportunity" to use the SXM health center. I was having chest pain which went through to my back. I thought I was having a heart attack. I went to the hospital and received blood tests , nitro sprays and an EKG. All for about $1000. Our medical insurance paid us when we got home.
As it turned out, this was likely the beginning of cholecystitis (gall bladder) which I wound up having removed in the US 4 months later.
The bottom line is that our health insurance did re-imburse us

Same here when I went to emergency and spent the night in the Dutch hospital after an ampulance ride. At admittance we had to present my CC which they put 2,000 florens on as a guarentee. After my stay and a follow up with a specialist and MRI total cost was between 700-800 US. Presented it to my insurance company and got totally reinbursed.

Both of you sound like you lucked out on that. I believe that Medicare has ZERO coverage outside the US and our Medicare Supplement (which overall is EXCELLENT coverage) only pays 80%..

Basic health care on the island is adequate and fairly reasonable, so I just get medical evacuation insurance. But I want to be evacuated back to my doctors in Boston - not sent to where the insurance company decides is appropriate for me, so read any documentation on evacuation insurance carefully. I think Skymed is the only one offering insurance that gets you home to your doctors. Would love to know if anyone else does t hat 'cause Skymed ain't cheap.

Our suppliment coverage pays 100% out of country. My wife found that out before we changed over.

Just so people know about needing medical care while on island and not so much on medical insurance although I will claim it when I get home. The day after we got here my one eye got sore and was red and thought that maybe I had pink eye (and I am far from being a medical person). So after 6 days at Flamingo we were moving on to BSV and I was renewing my vows in a couple of days and I had been using Visine Pink Eye and it wasn't improving. So before moving over to BSV I went to the Simpson Bay Medical Clinic Saturday morning with no appointment. I was told it would cost $70 and saw the doctor within 1 hour. The doctor told me it was a sty and prescribed some eye drops and it cleared it up after a few days. I didn't know what to expect trying to see a doctor in a foreign country but everything went better than expected and the doctor only charged me $50 because it didn't take her very long to diagnose.

Tim--Yes, as far as I know, Skymed is the only one that guarantees that you will be returned "home". For us, Florida is 'home', so anywhere in Florida isn't a really big deal.

At this point I'm on BC. I don't have Medicare so all of that is out of the discussion. My BC has told me that nothing out of the country would be covered. I'm sure there are coverages that allow for international travel, but not mine. I couldn't imagine the cost if I had and added international cost to it.
When I'm ready for Medicare, I'll look into international coverage like yours scubaman.

When my issue happened I wasn't on Medicare yet but my basic insurance covered everything.

For our upcoming trip to St. Martin, I purchased travel insurance through Allianz. The policy provides medical coverage up to $50,000 and emergency transportation up to $75,000. I’m starting to wonder if I should purchase increased limits.

Both of those numbers seem a bit low to me, especially the medical evac. When we book through Insure my Trip, I always look for a minimum of at least 100K for each. On our upcoming trip, I think the policy I actually purchased was either 500K or $1M for medical evac. For the medical, I think it was like 200K. As I said before, our supplement pays 80% outside the country. For medical expenses, also look to see whether the coverage is PRIMARY or not. If it is secondary, you may need to pay up front for expenses and wait to be reimbursed from the insurance company. To get primary medical payments, often the policy is a lot more expensive and the cost may be prohibitive.

As stated before, Sky Med is ONLY medical evac, but I believe it is primary coverage, so you just call them and they take care of everything. And Sky Med is one of the few that takes you to wherever your home is. Most medical evac policies take you to the closest medically acceptable hospital. In most cases from SXM, that's probably going to be somewhere in Florida. Now, somewhere in Florida is perfectly fine for me, but for someone who lives on the West Coast, or Michigan, it might not be so great.

And one more thing--the better policies also have a kind of concierge service, for want of a better word. You call them up and say "I have a dental emergency" or "my rental car has been stolen", or "I lost my passport", whatever, and they step you through what you are supposed to do.

Thanks, Carol. I’m going to contact Allianz, and maybe Sky Med too, to get better coverage.