International health insurance vs travel insurance: two products, one common mistake

Travel insurance answers: what if something goes wrong while I am away? Its logic is the trip — a start date, an end date, an emergency abroad, and a resolution that usually involves getting you back to your home healthcare system. It is priced per trip or per year of trips, and it is not designed to fund the third month of physiotherapy or a course of specialist appointments.

International health insurance answers: how do I pay for healthcare where I now live? Its logic is residence — a twelve-month contract that renews on its anniversary, cover for ongoing as well as sudden care within the plan's limits and exclusions, a defined geographical area, and a premium set by your age. On the plans we arrange the contract is a twelve-month period of cover, portable anywhere in the world outside the United States, with direct billing once hospital treatment is pre-authorised. Our how-it-works guide walks the annual cycle.

A long-stay visa is a residence decision, and consulates write their insurance rules accordingly: cover for the whole permit period, in the country, often without co-payments, often with a minimum sum. Some travel policies can be worded to satisfy a first application — our long-stay travel-insurance guide and the Schengen-vs-long-stay guide cover exactly where that line falls — but the second reading is the one that bites.

Renewal re-runs the insurance check at current requirements, and by then a trip product has usually done what trip products do: expired, aged out, or declined a second year. Our renewal guides for France, Spain and the Netherlands each show the office asking the same question again. A policy that renews with you is the property that matters at year two.

Put the two side by side on four lines and the decision usually makes itself. Term: trip versus twelve months renewable. What it treats: emergencies versus ongoing care within limits and exclusions. How it pays: reimbursement after the event versus direct settlement for pre-authorised hospital care plus pay-and-claim for consultations. Where it ends: at home versus wherever you live next, inside the policy's territory.

The plan levels we arrange differ on the second line — hospital-only through to full outpatient cover — and the compare page lays that out without prices in the way; the pricing page carries the rate-card numbers separately.

Compare the plan levels side by side