Aplus Health Insurance

Aplus Health Insurance’s plans for Southeast Asia,  EasyCare, is available to expats and locals up to age 50 who reside in the following countries: Bangladesh, Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam.

If you live outside these countries, there are other options available from Aplus.

The A Plus Southeast Asia EasyCare plans offer basic but solid international coverage to the young and healthy.

All private insurance plans will cover you for illnesses and injuries that require overnight hospitalization for treatment (inpatient cover). Most also offer optional coverage for routine outpatient, maternity or dental expenses.

The types of inpatient expenses covered are fairly standard across the industry, including room and board, surgeries and treatment, hospitalization, emergency evacuation. There is more variability among the optional coverages; typically, greater benefits will trigger higher premiums.

Policies are managed on an annual basis: you pay premiums for a year of coverage and the insurer pays for your eligible expenses up to an annual limit.

A Plus EasyCare policies offer broad coverage at reasonable rates.

Inpatient only limits: $500,000 or $1,000,000

Outpatient limits: $6,000

Maternity limits: $4,000

Dental limits: $1,000

The A Plus EasyCare plans cover Southeast Asia, excluding Singapore.

Outside this area (but excluding North America), you are covered for unforeseen emergencies and illnesses up to the annual coverage limit, so long as your trip away from your residence country doesn’t exceed 90 days.

It’s important to understand that private health insurance is a for-profit business. People with pre-existing medical conditions represent a risk to profitability, since they are far more likely to make claims than people who are entirely healthy, which affects the bottom line. Insurers manage this risk in a number of ways.

Most insurers use medical underwriting to assess a potential customer’s risk based on medical history. Then they decide whether to:

• Exclude certain conditions from the coverage of a policy.
• Impose a fee for covering specific conditions (called loading).
• Cover certain conditions despite the risk, or offer to reassess a condition at a later date.

Some insurers offer a moratorium policy: people with conditions that aren’t chronic (persistent, recurring, incurable) can take advantage of this special type of policy, which excludes non-chronic conditions from coverage for typically 2 years before covering them.

Employer groups of certain sizes can qualify for a policy that disregards participants’ medical history. This is the only way to cover certain conditions.

All APlus EasyCare policies are based on the moratorium model. Applicants with significant pre-existing conditions, particularly chronic conditions, are usually denied coverage. Those with milder conditions that are likely to be cured during the 2 year period may be accepted.

A Plus, like all legitimate international insurers, will cover COVID-19 treatment, subject to the policy rules. This means that inpatient treatment (typically at least an overnight stay) is covered up to the policy’s annual limits. However, if you don’t have outpatient coverage, any outpatient treatment will not be covered.

COVID-19 testing and vaccinations may be covered under outpatient health check or vaccination coverage.

Generally, COVID-19 quarantine expenses are not covered by any health insurance policy.

Tenzing can assist in obtaining a certificate that shows your COVID coverage, for travel or other purposes.

Your insurance is managed on an annual basis. Like most products, health insurance is subject to price changes, usually in the form of premium increases based on a number of factors.

Since this is a for-profit business, changes are based in part on past-year performance (generally premiums minus claims plus overhead) and medical inflation.

All of Tenzing’s international health insurance offerings operate on what is called a community rating basis, which takes into account all the covered individuals in a geographic insurance plan — if the plan did well, premium increases will be low, and vice versa. Any premium or benefit changes apply to everyone in the plan.

Some insurers use an experience rating approach, which looks at whether each individual’s premiums exceeded their claims and makes adjustments accordingly. This approach can result in wildly differing changes.

Your age is also a significant factor in determining your premium — as you grow older, your health generally declines and your risk increases. So annual premium changes also reflect your age. The increase can be larger if the insurer uses age bands: imposing a larger increase at 5-year intervals rather than a smaller increase each year.

A Plus EasyCare offers direct billing for inpatient services. This means that payment for treatment will be managed between the insurer and the hospital or clinic so that you don’t need to pay directly.

The A Plus network of direct billing partners extends throughout the coverage area and includes most of the top hospitals and clinics in each country.

Note that outpatient direct billing is not available — you’ll need to pay and make a claim for reimbursement for these services.

All of Tenzing’s international health plans operate on an annual basis, but some do allow you to make periodic payments rather than all at once.

For A Plus EasyCare, the following fees will apply.

• Quarterly: 10%
• Semi-annually: 8%

A Plus EasyCare offers group health insurance plans that allow employers to provide peace of mind to valued employees.

There are two types of employer plans:

• Full medical underwriting requires covered individuals to provide medical history, which the insurer uses to assess risk and assign premiums. There is usually a discount given based on the number of participants.
• Groups that are sufficiently large can qualify for a policy that disregards participants’ medical history — this is the only way to get private coverage for certain conditions.

APlus allows employers to establish plans with as few as 1 employee for FMU, 10 for MHD.