Do you want greater freedom as a digital nomad? Get Genki digital nomad insurance.
From Youtubers to graphic designers, photographers, and content creators, many members of our Buslifers community are living the digital nomad lifestyle and working on the road to fund their travels. While there are many incredible perks of country-hopping as you work, it can be impractical and even restricting when it comes to accessing healthcare. Each country has a different healthcare system with different rules and requirements for treating foreigners. This is often confusing and sometimes down-right frustrating when trying to get medical help. Especially when the results of the symptoms you Googled (but shouldn’t have) are telling you that the cold you have is actually lupus.
Luckily, as the digital nomad lifestyle is becoming more common, there are better support systems being put in place. Leading the revolution is Genki, a travel health insurance provider that is specifically designed for digital nomads. Genki knows that life as a nomad is all about flexibility, going where you want for however long you want. So, it has created an insurance package that encourages this. Rather than penning you in with limitations on time, activities, and benefits like most travel insurers, it provides you with freedom and flexibility. As a Buslifer living on the road, we know that there’s nothing more important.
So why is it that Genki is best possible travel health insurer for digital nomads? And how exactly can Genki give you greater freedom on the road? All is revealed below.
What’s the difference between digital nomad and regular travel insurance?
Arranging travel insurance that suits your unique needs as a digital nomad is often one of the most challenging parts of this lifestyle. Most travel insurance companies are set up to cater for short-term travel rather than long-term. They often require the traveler to provide their return date and charge a premium for anyone looking to travel longer than a few weeks. For most digital nomads, this makes traditional travel insurance very expensive and inconvenient. What if you want to travel without a return date and don’t want to spend all their hard-earned money on healthcare? This is where digital nomad travel health insurance comes in. This type of travel health insurance is designed specifically to give digital nomads greater freedom and peace of mind when working and living abroad for extended periods of time.
Why digital nomad insurance is important
As a Buslifer and digital nomad, you’re likely to stay in multiple foreign countries for extended periods of time. With digitial nomad travel health insurance, you’re automatically covered for all your possible health needs in each country you live and work in. Not only does this insurance cover you for urgent medical needs like accidents, viruses, and infections, but it also covers you for preventative treatments, sports and recreation, alternative medicines, dental care, and more. This gives you complete freedom to live a fun and adventurous life worry-free as a digital nomad and Buslifer.
What are the risks of working abroad without insurance?
Many of us are guilty of thinking “it won’t happen to me” when considering the health risks involved when traveling abroad, leading us to question whether to even bother taking out health insurance. However, sudden and unforeseen health problems happen and nobody is exempt from experiencing them. If you need medical care in a foreign country but don’t have travel health insurance, there are several issues you could face.
- Receiving high healthcare fees
In many countries across the world, hospitals, urgent care clinics, and doctor’s surgeries operate privately, which means they require direct payment for their care and treatment. It isn’t uncommon for them to charge foreigners hundreds of dollars for a check-up and thousands for treatment.
- Being denied access to healthcare
Since many healthcare providers in foreign countries are private, they have a right to deny treatment to individuals without health insurance. This protects them from potential losses from patients that can’t pay up, but it can be detrimental to those requiring medical treatment.
- Being denied healthcare that isn’t urgent
Even if healthcare is accessible for foreigners in the countries they want to visit, some healthcare services will deny treatment to foreigners without insurance if the problem is not urgent or life threatening. This can make it difficult to find access to antibiotics and other pharmaceutical treatments.
Choosing a digital nomad insurance
Let’s face it: buying insurance is not exactly an exciting experience. Sometimes, just typing the word ‘insurance’ into Google is enough to put us off our search. Then, to make matters worse, travel insurance companies make it difficult to find out exactly what’s included/excluded in their policy so that we buy it without checking. That is, if we even know what to look for in the first place. By taking the time to find out what makes a good travel health insurance, however, you can greatly improve your prospects as a digital nomad Buslifer. Not just in terms of healthcare, but also in terms of lifestyle. Since we at Buslifers are invested in optimizing your lifestyle on the road, we have done the hard work for you and found all of the most important requirements for a good travel health insurance.
A wide and varied coverage – some travel health insurances will only cover you for medical emergencies and urgent treatment for a limited selection of needs, while others will cover you for everything from extreme sports accidents to pregnancy and dental care. The more it covers you for, the better.
High coverage limits – the higher the coverage limits, the higher your payout is likely to be when claiming. The best insurers offer no limits for most medical claims, so you don’t have to worry about paying any of the medical bills yourself.
Convenient coverage periods — While some insurance providers have a small limit to the amount of days you can take out insurance for at one time, others offer monthly cover for up to two years. Finding a cover period that matches your travel period is ideal.
Non-essential coverage — In other words, what aren’t you covered for? Decide what kind of medical access is important to you and what you can happily live without while you’re abroad. This is especially important for people with existing conditions that require regular care.
Global coverage — Check which countries are covered in the travel health insurance policy in case there are country exemptions. You will also need to know if you need insurance to cover your own country too. The more countries you’re covered in, the more freedom you have!
Why Genki is our recommended insurer
With all the requirements in mind for choosing the best travel health insurance, we found that Genki ticked the most boxes, making it our top recommended insurer. Since it is designed with digital nomads in mind, there are so many perks to insuring yourself with Genki, even compared to other similar insurers. Above all, however, it’s because they provide the best cover and the greatest value for money. But just in case you’re curious to know what other benefits they offer that put Genki ahead of the travel health insurance game, here they are:
What benefits you get when insuring with Genki
- Outstanding medical coverage: Genki covers you for almost all medical-related needs (including physical and mental health related care) with little to no payout limits.
- Easy sign-up process: Not only is all the information about the insurance policy easy to find and understand, but completing your subscription is super simple too.
- Cancel at any time: Since Genki uses a monthly subscription service, you can cancel at any time, giving you greater flexibility with your travel plans.
- Even extreme sports can be covered: Knowing digital nomads like to be adventurous and outdoorsy, Genki covers a wide range of sports from hiking and cycling to skiing and kitesurfing.
- Buy outside of your home country: Genki is one of the few travel health insurers that allows you to take out a policy outside of your home country, adding to the logistical ease of the digital nomad lifestyle.
- Your claims are dealt with quickly: Genki works alongside Allianz Partners and DR-WALTER to respond to insurance claims quickly and pay out fairly.
Get the freedom to travel you deserve with Genki
Head to Genki now to find out more about the travel healthcare insurance policies they provide for digital nomads and Buslifers like you. Don’t worry, Genki makes it clear, concise, and super easy to find and arrange the right insurance package for you. Plus, the Genki Guide has a whole catalogue of other digitial nomad resources you didn’t know you needed like 15 money-saving tips for digital nomads and easy-to-get residencies.
Author: Emily Draper
Having visited over 70 countries across all seven continents, it's safe to say Emily has the voice of a true traveler. She has lived with the Hare Krishnas in Chile, an Amazonian tribe in Peru, and a retiree named Jerry in a Wisconsin trailer park. Now, Emily has embarked on the coolest adventure yet: across Europe in her self-converted bus.
