Medical insurance for corporate flight crew

[Mustard Seed]

Hi guys, can you share the type of Medical insurance you have- those that fully refund inpatient medical fees with worldwide coverage. Any recommendation on insurance companies, and the range of premium paid? Any experience/ difficulties from making a claim?

I feel it is important to have some kind of coverage because I cannot expect/ rely on my employer to take the responsibility. Thanks and appreciate your input.

[Globally Challenged]

Don't know about your market in Hong Kong, but I investigated this for similar reasons a couple of years ago in the UK.

Here you cannot just buy a retail travel insurance policy to cover you while out of the country as all policies have specific exclusions for flight crew (and you will be expected to provide your scheduled airline tickets etc as proof that you were travelling as a tourist if you ever come to claim). Fortunately we did manage to get ourselves onto the group scheme of our AOC company despite not being employed directly by them.

During the time we were sorting this out, a colleague did have grounds for a claim and fortunately our employer was willing to provide a letter stating that he had travelled on our Jet as a passenger and the insurance paid out.

[BizJetJock]

HealthCare International - International Health Insurance, Expatriate Insurance, Traveller Medical Cover, Personal Accident, Life Cover and Income Protection. (http://www.healthcareinternational.com)
Used these people for 7 years with no problems. They wrote an amendment to the accident cover that I am not covered while flying as crew, but no issues re health care.

[604guy]

Recently retired but our global medical coverage was provided by Blue Cross as part of our overall wage and benefits. This was a cost shared benefit between employer/employee. My share equated to less than the cost of a small coffee and donut a day. There was no exclusion regarding active flight crew. FWIW, my retirement package continues that global coverage with the same provider.

We did have an exclusion from our life insurance underwriter for flight crew members actively engaged in that role at the time of incident/accident but that was covered off by an additional rider to the aircraft hull insurance that automatically paid out crew seats, not just those claims associated with passenger seats. That additional coverage did require a sit down between the bean counters and flight ops but was a no brainer and a short conversation as I recall.