Health insurance requirements by destination
Twenty-seven countries, twenty-seven different rules.
There is no general answer to "do I need health insurance abroad". There is only what the country you are moving to actually asks for — and no two below ask for the same thing. Start with yours.
Every coloured country is a page. Cyprus, Qatar, Singapore and Hong Kong carry dots — real countries, small pixels. Click any of them.
Portugal
Asks for insurance twice.
Schengen cover for the consulate, full private cover for the residency appointment — and the policy that satisfies the first does not always satisfy the second.
Read the rule
Mexico
Public rights, private choices.
Employer-linked IMSS, the voluntary family scheme and private insurance have different conditions. Compare the route, hospitals and countries you need covered.
Read the ruleThailand
Asks a different question per visa.
O-A, O-X and LTR have different insurance evidence. Check your route, then compare the hospitals, benefits and continuity you need from a policy.
Read the ruleIndonesia
Compels you into a scheme that misses the flight out.
The national scheme is presented as mandatory and does not cover medical evacuation — and for the cases that matter most, the destination is Singapore.
Read the ruleSpain
The rule everyone quotes was repealed.
Since May 2025 the law asks non-lucrative applicants for four words: un seguro de enfermedad. The strict specification comes from your consulate — and consulates differ.
Read the ruleGermany
One decision, and one chance at it.
Cover is compulsory for everyone, and the move from statutory to private is close to irreversible — a choice usually made in week two, in a second language.
Read the ruleUnited Arab Emirates
Someone already chose your cover.
Your employer must insure you as a condition of your residence permit. Whether that duty reaches your family depends on the emirate — and that is where this goes wrong.
Read the ruleNetherlands
The risk here is a clock.
The duty bites at once and the four months only repair it — an existing foreign policy is not an exemption, and what triggers it is residence and Dutch wage tax.
Read the ruleUnited States
The country your policy quietly left out.
No national system to fall into, and the one country insurers price as a separate world. "Worldwide excluding USA" is a standard tier — and probably the one you hold.
Read the ruleFrance
Confirm the rights, then the layers.
Work, residence and coordinated cover lead to different arrangements. Active rights can exist before the Carte Vitale; compare the remaining cover you need.
Read the ruleAustralia
Here it follows your passport.
Two people on the same visa, in the same job, can hold different entitlements — because reciprocal agreements attach to nationality, not to residence.
Read the ruleCosta Rica
You cannot opt out.
CAJA is a condition of residency, private cover does not replace it, and the contribution is a share of your income rather than a premium.
Read the ruleCyprus
Universal, but perhaps not for you.
GESY eligibility follows contributions rather than residence — so the retiree it is marketed to is often the person it will not take.
Read the ruleQatar
The Gulf state that covers your family.
Employers must fund cover for the employee and dependants, before the permit issues. Its neighbours do not — and people carry the wrong assumption across the border.
Read the ruleSaudi Arabia
A gap is not a letter. It is a failed transaction.
Your family is usually your own cost, and cover is checked against a central register in real time when a residency transaction is attempted.
Read the rule
Malaysia
Here your health decides your visa.
MM2H wants a minimum sum held throughout and a medical before approval, and assesses older applicants case by case. Insurability gates the move.
Read the rulePhilippines
Compulsory, and small.
PhilHealth is required and pays part of a bill rather than the whole of one — and neither it nor a typical HMO moves a patient between islands.
Read the ruleSwitzerland
A premium that ignores what you earn.
Per person, flat, blind to income and to your medical history — and compulsory within three months, backdated to the day you register your residence if you join on time.
Read the ruleSingapore
An excellent system. Not yours.
The subsidy schemes are for citizens and permanent residents. A work pass does not admit you, and no length of stay changes that on its own.
Read the ruleCanada
The answer changes inside the country.
There is no Canadian health plan — there are thirteen, and the wait for a new resident runs from nothing to three months depending where you land.
Read the ruleSouth Africa
They cannot refuse you. They can price the year you joined.
Open enrolment, and a late-joiner surcharge set by your age that lasts for life — with years insured abroad generally counting for nothing.
Read the ruleJapan
Compulsory, quick, and thirty per cent.
Japan compels foreign residents in rather than keeping them out. The traps are a fortnight-long registration window and a patient share people underestimate.
Read the ruleBrazil
Brazil asks nothing.
Free to every person on Brazilian soil, with no premium and no copayment. The cost is waiting — and that is all a private plan actually buys you.
Read the ruleUnited Kingdom
Makes you pay for the NHS before you land.
The surcharge buys resident-level NHS care from the day the visa starts. Prescriptions, dental and assisted conception are another matter.
Read the ruleItaly
Voluntary cover costs a full year, whenever you join.
Voluntary SSN enrolment is a calendar-year contribution, never below €2,000 and never pro-rated. The consulate’s insurance ask is a separate, post-by-post question.
Read the ruleVietnam
Enrols the employee, not the family.
Since July 2025 a foreign employee’s BHYT turns on a fixed-term contract of at least 12 months. Spouses, children and transferees need another plan.
Read the ruleHong Kong
Prices the same hospital bed twice.
An eligible person pays HK$300 a day for a general bed; a non-eligible person HK$7,400. The difference is a Hong Kong Identity Card on a valid permission to stay.
Read the ruleSomewhere else? The rule is different again, and we would rather tell you what it is than sell you a policy shaped for a country you are not moving to. And if your life is not shaped like a country at all — moving constantly, registered nowhere, posted with an embassy or organisation, or sent by an employer — those pages are yours.
Ordered by what cover actually costs.
Average annual premium for a comparable international plan, from an independent fifty-country benchmark. The number in the left column is where each country sits among all fifty — not among these.
| Rank | Country | At 24 | At 35 | At 50 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $12,773 | $18,765 | $22,368 | $17,969 |
| 2 | Hong Kong | $11,360 | $15,822 | $21,344 | $16,175 |
| 3 | Singapore | $10,065 | $13,967 | $18,662 | $14,231 |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $8,191 | $11,513 | $15,476 | $11,727 |
| 6 | Japan | $6,816 | $9,321 | $14,915 | $10,350 |
| 7 | Brazil | $7,068 | $9,596 | $13,740 | $10,135 |
| 8 | Mexico | $6,967 | $9,830 | $13,257 | $10,018 |
| 9 | Thailand | $6,895 | $9,621 | $13,047 | $9,854 |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | $7,132 | $7,977 | $13,931 | $9,680 |
| 14 | Spain | $6,338 | $8,949 | $11,702 | $8,996 |
| 15 | Switzerland | $6,392 | $8,017 | $12,328 | $8,912 |
| 16 | Australia | $6,035 | $8,451 | $11,135 | $8,540 |
| 18 | Qatar | $6,463 | $6,553 | $12,052 | $8,356 |
| 21 | Cyprus | $5,730 | $8,068 | $10,748 | $8,182 |
| 22 | France | $5,625 | $7,837 | $10,554 | $8,005 |
| 23 | Indonesia | $5,604 | $7,932 | $10,291 | $7,942 |
| 24 | Italy | $5,485 | $7,778 | $10,428 | $7,897 |
| 25 | Canada | $5,343 | $7,573 | $10,580 | $7,832 |
| 27 | Portugal | $5,485 | $7,686 | $10,184 | $7,785 |
| 32 | Saudi Arabia | $4,973 | $6,840 | $10,256 | $7,356 |
| 33 | Malaysia | $5,146 | $7,242 | $9,612 | $7,333 |
| 34 | Germany | $5,081 | $7,099 | $9,741 | $7,307 |
| 37 | South Africa | $5,018 | $7,122 | $9,458 | $7,199 |
| 41 | Philippines | $4,800 | $6,482 | $9,243 | $6,842 |
| 42 | Vietnam | $4,776 | $6,763 | $8,945 | $6,828 |
| 44 | Netherlands | $4,748 | $6,539 | $8,931 | $6,739 |
From the SIP Health Cost Index 2025, SIP Medical Family Office. Data as at August 2025. Averages across seven international insurers and three standard profiles — not quotes, and not a comparison of the insurers themselves. Costa Rica is not among the index's fifty countries and so does not appear.
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