How do healthcare services for foreign visitors and tourists lead to extreme medical bills?
Visitors to the United States are fully responsible for the cost of their medical care. If urgent or emergency care is required, either the visitor or their travel medical insurance policy will be expected to pay in full.
Unfortunately, travel medical insurance (or “visitor insurance”) is not subject to the same regulations as most resident health plans and may deny all or part of claims due to limits, caps and pre-existing conditions.
Understand how travel medical insurance works.
Travel medical insurance typically involves coverage of specific care types and coverage levels for a specified period of time. Like other plans, the policy may have deductibles.
How to handle medical bills resulting from a visit to the United States
If your medical care or a loved one’s medical care while traveling to the United States has left them with excessive hospital bills, you have options:
- If you have travel medical insurance, make sure your insurance provider is paying up their full responsibility.
- Follow our recommended steps to negotiate down your bills
- Negotiating across borders and languages can be challenging. But hospitals have strong incentive to negotiate and avoid the costs of collecting on bills from patients residing overseas. If you need help, hire a qualified medical billing advocate to reduce your bills to a fair price.
Learn more
- Negotiating strategy
- Settlement offer
- Hospital bill