My friend is Taiwanese and lives in the states with her husband. She plans to get an ARC for him so they wouldn’t need to buy travel insurace when they visit Taiwan. They don’t plan to live in Taiwan. Can they do that?
Edit. Sorry I missed the husband bit. I’ll let someone else answer this.
As far as they submit required documents with an application form, they can do.
Ａdd：I mean they can get ARC.
Getting an ARC so that the husband doesn’t have to buy travel insurance when they visit Taiwan seems like a bit of overkill. When I first came here I had a travel insurance plan with no deductible and a coverage limit of over $1 million for around $60/month.
If your friend and her husband have health insurance in the states, there’s a good chance that their existing policy will reimburse them for medical expenses incurred overseas subject to their normal deductibles/copays.
Is the real intent is to have the ARC so that the husband can get NHI and come to Taiwan when he needs medical care?
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If that means getting NHI, the husband should be in Taiwan continuously for 6 months on his ARC, or he should be employed by an employer providing NHI.
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If you don’t mind me asking, which travel insurance company and plan did you go with? Like tando says, unless employed, a spouse can’t get NHI for the first 6 months of being on the ARC so a travel insurance recommendation would be helpful. Thanks.
Plenty on insubuy. I can buy travel insurance for less than $2-3 a day from that site.
And I assume insurance is just to satisfy the authorities. Out of pocket costs are so low in Taiwan that I wouldn’t buy any insurance if I didn’t have to, and if I had a choice (which I don’t) I wouldn’t opt into NHI.
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Thanks for your replies, so in short： yes my friend’s husband can get an ARC, but he needs to live in Taiwan continously for 6 months in order to get health insurance, correct? After he lives for 6 months in a row in Taiwan, he can have taiwanese insurance for life, or would insurance stop when he goes back to the Ｓtates?
yap.
as far as he keeps his ARC and pays premium, he can be on NHI, wherever he is. His first ARC may be for a year. He needs to renew his ARC in Taiwan. When he renews, he can choose 1~3 years.
How low are we talking about without insurance? So for example, if a foreigner on a visitor visa without NHI needs an emergency room visit for say, food poisoning (so nothing major but still need urgent medical attention), is it generally a flat fee to see a urgent care doctor and how much out of pocket?
By way of comparison to Hong Kong, an emergency room visit at a public hospital like that for someone who holds a HKID (similar to having NHI) is like US$23 versus around US$160 for someone without. It doesn’t break the bank but it’s still a hefty difference. Plus it scales up fast for more involved medical services: Hospital Authority : Fees and Charges
It was IMG.
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How much are premiums? and how to pay it?
Your friend is a Taiwanese citizen, right? Then, it is the same with the way she is doing.
I had to go to ER once for a fractured wrist, they wanted me to stay overnight but I didn’t want to pay for that. Dr cost, x-ray, splint and medicine came to about 9000nt
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I think I paid about 2-3k when I passed out from dengue fever. They did some sort of xray to rule something out and then a blood test for the virus. Didn’t stay overnight.
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