Would an insurance company consider a roller skating accident when you were 3 years old a
pre-existing condition?

Probably not. But you never know.  

A pre-existing condition is:  Any injury or sickness that manifested itself prior to the effective date of insurance coverage – regardless of whether you received medical attention for it or not.

Alot of us are perplexed because health insurance companies won’t cover pre-existing conditions. Companies know that if they cover all pre-existing conditions they won’t be in business long. Insuring a person with a pre-existing condition is like insuring a burning building.  Of course no one wants to be compared to a burning building, but we get the picture. You insure a burning building, you are losing money; you insure a person with serious pre-existing conditions, you are losing money.

What you need to know is that different companies put a time limit on what is considered a pre-existing condition. Sometimes a condition can go back to your childhood. One insurance company gives a five-year look-back as the time span for determining a pre-existing condition. Others state time limits at 6 months, 12 months, 24 months, 60 months, etc. 

Lesson:  check with your insurance company on their time limits.

Call Good Neighbor Insurance for your international health and travel insurance  needs.

Let’s say you are a 23 year old female who wants to get health insurance.  At age 20 you played soccer for your university and you busted your knee. A health insurance company will take special notice of that.  Your knee is considered a pre-existing condition.  And that’s not good news for you.

A waiver or rider is an insurance company’s method of excluding certain pre-existing conditions from health coverage.

So, what are you going to do?

Here are options:

1. Accept a “waiver’ or “rider” (same idea) for the knee.  You will be insured for everything else except your knee.

2. Get “capped coverage.”  In this situation the company does not cover the pre-existing condition for the first 24 months, and then limits coverage for the condition to $5,000 a year for the next ten years. This is better than no coverage at all for your knee.

3. Which brings us to the best option, in my opinion.  Accept a temporary rider. Often a company will remove a rider after 24 months if you have had no recurring problems with your knee.  Overall, a rider is preferable to capped coverage if there is a possibility the rider can be lifted at a later date.

Good Neighbor Insurance – covering International Health and Travel Insurance