I would like to make some additional important comments that you need to look at when buying medical insurance, and I am not an insurance broker so I don’t have to favour any particular company at all:
Independent insurance brokers make their revenue on what they sell you, so may put forward one insurance over another to make more money depending on commissions etc. So not always in your interest but in theirs. Read the fine print and make sure you know what you are getting for your money as stated above.
Often the low risk items will provide huge amounts of coverage and the high risk items coverage have low thresholds to avoid expensive claims. Healthcare here and in some of the centers of medical excellence is very expensive, sometimes exceeding costs in the US and other international centers.
As far as the evacuation cover goes, it is not just about the coverage, you can be insured for ten million $$ but if you don’t have someone to get you out of China when you need it, then you are stuck here, and I certainly do not agree with the comments on Beijing and Shanghai necessarily being acceptable – they are not if you come from a country with superb healthcare (sometimes just acceptably good).
So when you choose your insurance make sure that they are affiliated to a medical assistance company for evacuation that has a presence in China or who is able to do an evacuation out of China properly in an acceptable time frame, and that you don’t end up staying here because the insurance tells you this is an ”acceptable international standard” only because they don’t have the means to get you out, and because they don’t want to spend the money; remember they are insurances, so they make money on premiums and not on spending money on their clients, so they will obviously do all they can to keep costs down, with what could sometimes be construed as ‘acceptable healthcare’ based on personal perceptions.
For the record, I don’t make money out of moving or referring patients to any healthcare provider or insurance/assistance company, I am a salaried employee and have the interest of my clients at heart to ensure they get the best possible care – I can write a book about some very unfavourable outcomes due to poor/inappropriate health insurance cover or the total lack thereof in China as well as other parts of Asia.
