How does health insurance work in Mexico?
Travel insurance for Mexico is required to get free, timely medical care. The terms of each individual insurance contract differ in many ways, but most of them provide for the following standard risks:
Outpatient / inpatient treatment
Emergency dental care for acute pain, inflammation, trauma
Paying for medicines prescribed by a doctor
Call an ambulance
Transportation to your home country in case of severe illness
Are you an experienced hiker and do you travel often? If yes, then you can immediately calculate the cost of insurance using an online calculator. But if you have never been to Mexico, we recommend that you carefully read this article, from which you will find out what dangers you may encounter during your trip, how to issue a policy that cannot be lost on your own, without intermediaries and overpayments, and how you can reduce the cost of health insurance in Mexico almost doubled.
How much does Mexico travel insurance cost?
The base cost of travel insurance to Mexico is determined by the insurance company, and is influenced by factors such as living standards index, GDP per capita, crime rate, average cost of medical services, etc. The more favorable the general situation in the country, the cheaper the insurance will cost, however, a high standard of living implies high incomes of the population, and hence expensive medical care, which also cannot but affect the cost of the policy. Mexico is more likely to be a country in the golden mean, which is able to provide both a decent, relatively safe holiday, and quality medical care at an affordable price.
When applying for a policy, several parameters are added to the base price of insurance in Mexico that determine the functionality of the policy and, accordingly, its price. The sum insured, the duration of the trip, the presence of a deductible and various additional services are determined by the insured (tourist), which allows you to choose a policy based not only on his needs, but also on the amount available.
Individual characteristics such as age and the presence of chronic diseases also affect the cost of insurance, as the elderly and children are more susceptible to various diseases, and the presence of chronic diseases significantly increases the likelihood of seeking medical help due to their possible exacerbation after the flight and acclimatization.
The average cost of insurance in Mexico for 14 days with an insurance amount of 50,000 euros is 25-30 euros, but if you double the insurance amount, then the total cost of the policy will increase by only 50%, not 100. Such an exponential, non-linear decrease in the cost of insurance The amount is explained by the fact that the duration of the trip also affects the price of insurance, and since it has remained the same (14 days), the cost of the policy has increased only by half.
The higher the sum insured, the cheaper it is. If a policy with an insurance sum of 50,000 euros costs 25 euros, then for 1 euro spent on insurance you can get 2,000 euros of compensation, but if you increase the sum insured to 100,000 euros, then the policy will cost about 37 euros (50% more expensive), and for 1 euro you can already get 2,700 euros in compensation.
In order to make it easier to understand the algorithm for reducing the cost of insurance, you can use the online calculator and understand everything using a good example.
Do you need insurance in Mexico?
High-quality treatment implies the use of expensive equipment, and hence the high cost of medical services. So, one day of treatment in a private clinic can cost 200-400 euros, and a regular appointment with a therapist can cost 50-100 euros. The procedure for positron emission or magnetic resonance imaging costs several thousand euros, and all major operations amount to tens of thousands of euros.
In public clinics, treatment can be free only for citizens of Mexico, which means that a Russian tourist will have to pay almost the same price for treatment as in a private clinic. If the tourist does not have insurance, medical assistance will still be provided, but after that he will be billed for a three- or four-digit amount, which will have to be paid already from Russia.
To a greater extent, medical insurance in Mexico for tourists is not protection against financial losses during treatment, but a guarantee of its timeliness and quality. When contacting any clinic without insurance, you will at least have to tell what happened to you, how you feel and where it hurts, but for this, either you must know the official language of Mexico, or your doctor must, by a lucky chance, know Russian. If you have insurance, such language barriers are broken with one call to the assistance, after which the tourist will be provided with an interpreter.
The reason for going to the clinic in almost half of the cases are various colds, such as SARS, acute respiratory infections, pneumonia, bronchitis, etc. Even (more precisely, “especially”) in hot countries, people can get sick, for example, after swimming in cold water or an evening walk, because at night the temperature here drops very sharply. If we exclude such diseases, then the main sources of danger for a tourist in Mexico are:
Heavy acclimatization
High crime rate (mostly pickpockets and hotel thefts)
Accident (due to ignorance of traffic rules and local laws)
Food poisoning from unfamiliar foods, foods, or tap water
Infections, viruses and bacteria
Dangerous insects and wild animals
How to choose travel insurance for Mexico?
When choosing insurance, you should pay attention not only to the price, but also to its capabilities, because in the event of an insured event, you will need the highest quality and promptly provided medical care.
The sum insured determines the maximum possible cost of treatment, which will be paid by the insurance company. The larger the sum insured, the lower the probability of not receiving medical care due to its high cost. For a trip to Mexico, we recommend an insured amount of at least 50,000 euros.
Assistance is a company that provides high speed and coordination of actions of the insurance company and the clinic in the event of an insured event. The quality of the work of the assistant company employees directly affects the speed of providing medical care to the tourist, so insurance companies try to cooperate with assistants who have the most qualified operators:
International SOS (ISOS)
Mondial Assistance (Mondial)
Class assistance (Class)
Europe Assistance
Global Voyager Assistance
It is most reliable to choose an insurance company based on personal experience or the experience of familiar tourists. If there is no such experience, then it would be most reasonable to choose a large, well-known insurance company that has managed to declare itself in the insurance market a positive payment history and a minimum number of lawsuits. The cleaner the reputation of an insurance company, the less likely it is that it will suddenly decide to tarnish it and try to avoid an insurance payment.
Companies with the highest percentage of payments in relation to the total amount of insurance premiums received:
Alliance
Rosgosstrakh
Ingosstrakh
reso-guarantee
Renaissance Insurance
A deductible can reduce the cost of insurance by almost half, but sometimes such savings can be very expensive. The deductible is the amount you set when you signed the contract, which you will have to pay on your own in the event of an insured event. Typically, the deductible ranges from $50 to $300, and the larger the deductible, the cheaper the insurance will cost.
There are only two ways to pay for your treatment to insurance companies:
service payment
arrival compensation
If you choose the first option, you will be able to get the necessary medical care by simply showing your policy to the doctor.
Compensation upon arrival implies self-payment for treatment on the spot with subsequent reimbursement of its cost.
Additional services, such as legal advice, translation services, or trip cancellation, can make your stay in Mexico easier and compensate for financial losses in the event of a trip interruption.
Active recreation insurance allows you to receive compensation from the insurance company in case of injury during extreme sports. If you take out insurance in Mexico and do not include this option in the contract, then there will be no payment for treatment, even if you were injured during a harmless and seemingly completely non-extreme morning run, quiet and peaceful fishing on the river bank or a friendly volleyball match.
Some insurance companies provide insurance for each sport separately. This allows you not to pay for the entire option of active recreation almost as much as the cost of health insurance to Mexico itself, but simply to insure the type of sport (recreation) that you plan to practice. This option will cost much less.