I already have a blog post up about the benefits that traveling healthcare offers. These benefits are usually similar to that of a full time position and sometimes better. For example, my current traveling company offers a 5% 401k matching. Whereas one of my more recent contracts at a hospital only matched 2% to full time employees…
In this past post, insurance is touched on, but in lieu of the many questions from readers, I think it would be beneficial to give a full post dedicated to deciphering the common myths about insurance with traveling healthcare.
Common Questions
This first one is is my favorite.
Question: “Do travelers get insurance?”
Answer: Yes. I understand that the income we make as travelers is more than permanent positions but it is not due to the fact that your insurance gets cut. It is true that the hospital or clinic that you are working your assignment at doesn’t pay for your benefits but that is only because you are getting your insurance from the company you are contracting with.
Question: “What health insurance am I eligible for?”
Answer: Every company offers medical, dental, and vision insurance. Some companies even offer pet insurance as well!
Question: “ What type of plan are you offered?”
Answer: All of my plans have been PPO or preferred provider organization. This type of healthcare plan offers you the freedom to receive care both in and out of your network, which means you would be allowed to keep your current doctors. Although, it’s a cheaper option to seek care inside of the network.
Question: Can I get coverage for my family?
Answer: Yes. Every company I have worked for has offered insurance for spouses and dependents as part of a family plan.
Question: “When does my insurance start?”
Answer: It depends on your specific company you contract with. The majority of companies that I have worked for has insurance that starts on Day 1 of your contract. There are some companies that start after a set period of time once you are “eligible” for this benefit. This makes it an important question for you the traveler to then ask your company during the interview process.
Question: “When does my insurance end?”
Answer: Again, this is company dependent and something that you should be asking during your interview process. I plan to tell this story in a later post, but I recently made a very poor financial mistake as a result of misunderstanding this concept.
For me personally, I have worked for companies where my insurance ended my last day of work, 3 weeks after my last work day, or they have even ended the last day of the month that my last day of work occurred in. So again, always ask these questions before you sign your contract.
Question: “Is my insurance good?”
Answer: Most of these plans are high deductible plans but some companies do offer a few different options. So, if you are healthy individual who doesn’t seek healthcare very much, these plans may be more than enough. Also, because these plans are usually high deductible plans, it allows you access to a health savings account which is one of my favorite investment vehicles.
Question: “How expensive is the insurance plans?”
Answer: Since I don’t know everyone’s unique situations I can only answer this question for myself. For context, I always sign up for the single, basic insurance plan. Together, between my medical, dental, and vision, I pay around $59 dollars per pay check. So $59 per week.
Note: When I calculate my weekly paychecks when reporting my income my blog posts, this amount is always deducted before I report this number.
Question: “Are you offered life insurance?”
Answer: Each company has offered me a free $50,000 life insurance plan. This obviously isn’t much, but for someone single like me, it is more than enough and a nice perk at no charge to the employee. Most companies do offer larger plans for employees who do have more dependents that they need to look out for.
Conclusion
This post is meant to give you a general idea of how insurance works with traveling healthcare and to answer some of the more common questions I hear about. But this post is also meant to remind you that ultimately it’s up to you to be asking these questions to each traveling company you are interviewing with. Each company may have insurance, but the make up of that insurance plan can vary between companies so It’s important to know what your specific plan entails BEFORE you sign your contract.
Hopefully, this helped answer some of the questions you may have had regarding insurance and traveling healthcare. If you have any more specific questions, feel free to comment below or message me privately here.
