Outpatient Cover Health Insurance

As an expat, having both inpatient and outpatient coverage on your health insurance policy will mean paying a higher premium. Here we will look at the specific occasions in which you might not need to include outpatient coverage on your medical insurance, allowing you to save money along your insurance journey. 

1. You and your family have no requirements to regularly visit doctors 

If you and your family stay healthy most of the time and only pay a visit or two to your physician for outpatient care within a year, purchasing outpatient cover on your medical insurance policy may not be worth your investment.  

2. Your country of residence has inexpensive outpatient medical costs and affordable prescription medicine prices  

If you live in a Southeast Asian country such as Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines then medical costs of outpatient care and those of medicine are fairly inexpensive. As a result, having outpatient cover on your medical insurance may not be required as the additional premium that an insurer will charge could be higher than simply self-insuring this component of your cover. 

3. You already have the outpatient coverage in your corporate medical insurance package 

If you work in a company where your employer offers you a medical insurance package that already includes an outpatient coverage option, then there could be no need for you to purchase outpatient cover if you are purchasing “top-up” medical insurance. Typically, this type of cover would cover hospitalization only type benefits and the need to have outpatient coverage included would be redundant.  

Points to Consider 

If you would like the premium for outpatient cover be sure that it is worth your investment. It is good to be aware of how much you pay per a doctor’s visit and how many times you visit a doctor per year. If you are buying a policy for the first time, it can be worth exploring plans where outpatient comes as a module that can be added on at a later stage such as on your policy renewal. This way you could understand more about what your usage is potentially going to be. Usually if you do upgrade the cover at a later stage additional underwriting will be required so this is important to be mindful of.