Health & Wellness Best Posts in Thread: Medical Insurance Suggestions

Philhealth is available to Foreigners at P17,500 pa or P4,500 per quarter...but doesn't cover the Z pack (major heart surgery etc). As you or some one pointed out it's big plus as it gets you immediately admitted into any hospital here in an emergency...so carry your Philhealth membership card with you at all times and keep it paid up to-date (they will ask for the current payment receipt).

 

The basics of medical expenses and insurance options in the Philippines are:
1. Medical care (doctors/hospital/surgery) is a lot cheaper here (I broke my leg last year, got it fixed for about 150k)
2. Anything you might need from the pharmacy is not so cheap at all.
3. Philhealth sucks. It's better than nothing but they cover at most 40% of hospital expenses. Also, when I enquired years ago if I could enroll I was told that it's not available for foreigners.
4. Commercial private insurance is way above budget for most 60/65 plus, last time I looked Pacific Cross wanted something like 10,000 US$ a year to insure me (increasing year after year by 10% or so up to age 75, after that it gets completely prohibitively expensive).

In short, better to have an emergency stash of money just in case, and pray that you won't need any really expensive surgery/treatment. Beyond that, if you can still fly to your country of origin to get that expensive treatment/surgery without having to pay for it, then good for you. If you can not, better make sure your better half has enough money to bury you.