Studying abroad: two insurance requirements that shouldn’t be confused

A very large number of student visas require proof of health cover to be issued, with amount, duration and benefit criteria specific to each country. But it’s not an absolute rule: some countries impose nothing at the state level for this type of visa, as shown by the F-1 student visa in the United States, which carries no federal insurance requirement. Before leaving, you therefore need to check separately what the host country requires and what the institution requires — these are two different things.

Even when the state requires nothing for the visa, the host institution very often requires its own cover, with its own equivalence criteria: that’s the case for almost all American universities, which require their own health plan unless proof of personal cover deemed equivalent by the institution is provided. In other countries, the requirement instead comes from the state but is applied through the institution: in New Zealand, a national code requires institutions to check that every international student has compliant insurance. In Canada, the rules vary again differently, by province and by institution. In every case, insurance that’s sufficient for the visa isn’t necessarily sufficient for the institution, and vice versa — both need to be checked separately, never assuming one covers the other.

For a university exchange in another European Union country (Erasmus in particular), the EHIC gives access to the host country’s public healthcare on the same terms as a local resident, free of charge and without heavy paperwork. But it covers neither medical repatriation nor planned care, and many institutions require a dedicated insurance policy on top for a long programme — the EHIC meets a need for unforeseen care during a temporary stay, not the full set of criteria for an enrolment file. Before leaving, it’s therefore still worth checking: the amount and duration of cover required by the visa (if there is one), the equivalence criteria of the institution if it requires its own plan, and whether a social security agreement between France and the host country changes anything.

The detail of what the EHIC does — and doesn’t — cover for this type of stay, as well as the case of an exchange outside the European Union, is covered in a dedicated page: Erasmus and university exchanges.