Supplementary health insurance

I read a few threads about this and I’m also wondering if I should get a German travel health insurance just for the first 6 months until I can enter NHI, or keep it for a few years.

Having the German travel insurance for longer would more or less double the monthly costs, but it would still not be too expensive (~2400NTD per month vs. 1200NTD per month for the short-term insurance).

The question is: How much would people usually pay for NHI+Additional local Taiwanese insurance?

In the NHI handbook (https://ws.nhi.gov.tw/001/Upload/293/RelFile/Ebook/English.pdf) I found some tables on how to calculate the premium. If I did not calculate wrongly, I would have to pay something between 5000-10,000USD a year (there are quite a few unknowns regarding my employment status and salary, therefore the huge range). Does this sound realistic?

Especially if I go on holiday abroad, I probably would also have to get a travel insurance - would this be expensive if getting it in Taiwan? My German travel insurance would of course cover trips to other countries…

Since this thread is already a bit dated, I wonder what is the current situation like. Do most people simply have the NHI insurance, or get something additional (it sounded to me like this, reading some posts here), or keep a travel insurance of their country of origin?

Thanks and regards,
Fabian

If you get a job or study here then I believe you don’t have to wait the 6 months. If you are joining through someone else’s like your husband/wife then you will have to wait the 6 months.

This depends on your job and salary, but it does seem very high to me. I earn 72k NTD a month as a teacher and pay about 1k NTD a month for my health insurance. so roughly 400 USD a year. That is just for myself. My wife pays her own through her company. Even when I didn’t have a job and went through my wife’s I don’t think I was paying anywhere close to 5k USD a year.

I found this a little hard to get. I was able to find someone luckily, but they said they were really only doing it because I’m married and likely to stay here longer. They told me foreigners might just leave and stop paying or something weird like that. There are lots of different plans and add-ons. I have kind of a basic one and pay around 30k NTD a year for this.

In total I pay around 42k NTD a year for both my insurances.

I don’t know how expensive local ones are here, but you can always find some online and buy just for that trip.

I would just get rid of your travel insurance, unless you get sick a lot or do adventurous things like mountain climbing. Otherwise doctors are pretty cheap here even without insurance. I went to a doctors office before getting my insurance and only paid 600 NTD. Had my insurance expire in between jobs and the cost for going to a hospital doctor was only 800 NTD.

Totally agree with @cats_meow. Getting a local insurance is the same story as opening a bank account, starting a phone contract, etc. Difficulties created not because you are not entitled to it (as a foreigner with ARC you bloody are) but because Taiwanese are scared of dealing with a foreigner like something bad or mafan is going to happen. I have friends doing insurance and every time that I wanted to purchase an additional policy to NHI their higher-ups panicked and told them not to do it with the usual long list of nonsensical reasons (@Marco :laughing: ).

I’m not in the mood for arguing again so I did the same as you and just purchased an international travel policy to cover me for the first 7 months (rather than 6, just to be safe) before joining NHI. Then I will consider whether getting back into the battle field :rofl: :rofl:

On a side note, if a foreigner-naturalised-Taiwanese decides to go into the insurance business to help other foreigners it would be a gold mine :wink:

Story of my life!

They do travel medical insurance as well as more comprehensive longer-term policies for expats.

Not sure a comprehensive supplemental policy is really worth it if you have NHI. Since you’ll be required to have NHI, a supplemental policy would only be a top up for services not covered by NHI. A travel policy when you go abroad would probably make more sense unless you have a unique situation.

Hi All,

Thank you very much for your quick and comprehensive support. @cats_meow, special thanks for the openness regarding specific income/cost considerations, this is extremely helpful!

I decided to go with the same approach as @boaz25 and have a German insurance for a few months - it’s affordable and gives me enough time to figure everything out locally.

For the “on-demand travel insurance” later on, I will certainly consider SafetyWing - thank you, @RBE!

Again, thanks a lot everybody and please stay healthy,
Fabian

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