Topic I
Insuring a family abroad: person by person, not as a flat package
An expat family isn’t a single policyholder multiplied by the number of people. Each member has their own age, their own medical history, and sometimes their own waiting periods: cover needs to be designed accordingly, not as a single package applied to the whole household.
Each family member has their own risk profile
In private health insurance, each person to be insured generally answers their own medical questionnaire : an adult, their spouse and each child don’t have the same medical history, and the insurer assesses the risk individually, even when the policy takes the form of a single family plan. That’s also why the cost of family cover depends on the number of people and each person’s age, not a flat amount per household — see the expat family insurance guide for what that means for the policy in practice.
Maternity and paediatric follow-up: waiting periods to plan for
Maternity cover is almost always subject to a waiting period longer than the one for routine care: it needs to be taken out before a pregnancy begins, not during, to be covered. Paediatric follow-up (vaccinations, routine consultations, emergencies) deserves the same care: the waiting periods that apply to a child’s routine care aren’t necessarily the same as an adult’s, and need to be checked item by item before treating a benefit as active.
Children: often more favourable conditions, never automatic
Many policies provide for a reduced excess, or even none at all, for children attached as dependants — a common way of lowering out-of-pocket costs on the items children use most (paediatrics, ENT). But the age threshold used to define a “child” or a “minor” under the policy, and the extent of the reduction, vary from one insurer to another: this condition is set out in each policy’s terms and conditions, it’s never assumed. See the detail of what’s specific to covering children : paediatric follow-up, vaccinations, a simplified medical questionnaire, and the requirement to declare each child individually.
A child born abroad also triggers nationality and civil-status steps (declaration to the embassy or consulate, transcription of the birth certificate) that are independent of health cover — a topic outside the scope of this guide, but one that shouldn’t be overlooked while attention is on maternity and paediatric benefits.
The local healthcare system also shapes how family cover is organised — see for example the United States, Portugal and Thailand pages.
Get an estimate for the whole family, person by person: Expat family insurance
Written by Expavy