If you've searched the web for private health insurance that covers expats in the Philippines then you are probably for looking for established UK based health insurance providers that can cover your medical costs in the Philippines.
Living as an expat in the Philippines you want to avoid any unwanted and unexpected medical costs. In some countries these can amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds for serious conditions.
Our advice when shopping around for private medical cover that covers expatriates living in the Philippines is to speak to a health insurance broker. Health insurance is extremely complex and if you want complete certainty that the Philippines is covered by your policy you should consult with a medical insurance broker who can explain which providers will cover medical expenses for expatriates in the Philippines and which will not.
There are many advantages to using a broker but the biggest by far is that you're using their expertise at no cost. They are paid by the insurer (Aviva or Bupa etc) rather than by you so it costs you no extra to use their services.
- Do you live in many different postcodes? Some will give you a lower premium than offers. A insurance broker will be able to advise whats best.
- Do you have a hobby that may invalidate your insurance claim? A broker will know this critical information.
- If you are a couple and one of you has claimed on your insurance policy this year would it be cheaper to separate you both onto two different policies?
- You've lean't you're at risk of developing a certain condition and want to know which insurer offers the largest amount of cover for it. A broker will know this instantly saving you huge amounts of time and effort.
You can call around every medical insurance provider you can find and ask if they provider cover for expats in the Philippines, however this will be a very time consuming process. Each insurer will ask for your medical history because its not normally a simple yes or not if a medical condition is covered or not.
Its far far quicker to speak to one health insurance broker which will know which policy providers on the market offer cover for expats in the Philippines and under what terms they do or don't cover it.
The Philippines Information
Tourism is an important sector for Philippine economy. In 2019, the travel and tourism industry contributed 12.7% to the country's GDP. Philippines is an archipelagic country composed of 7,641 islands with 81 provinces divided in 17 regions. The country is known for having its rich biodiversity as its main tourist attraction. Its beaches, heritage towns and monuments, mountains, rainforests, islands and diving spots are among the country's most popular tourist destinations. The country's rich historical and cultural heritage, including its festivals and indigenous traditions, are also one of the attractions of Philippines. Popular destinations among tourists are Cebu, Boracay, Palawan, Siargao, and many more. However, despite these large potential, the tourist industry of the Philippines has lagged behind its Southeast Asian fellows like Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, due to political and social problems.
As of 2015, 4.99 million Filipinos have been employed in the tourism sector and the government collected P227.62 billion pesos from foreign tourists, almost 25% of which came from Boracay. The country attracted a total of 5,360,682 foreign visitors in 2015 through its successful tourism campaign of "It's More Fun in the Philippines". In 2018, foreign arrivals peaked at 8,168,467.
Philippines has garnered numerous titles related to tourism, namely, the traditional capital of the world's festivities, the capital of the western Pacific, the centre of Hispanic Asia, the Pearl of the Orient Seas, center of the Coral Triangle, and the capital of fun. The country is also a biodiversity hotspot, having the world's highest endemism rate for bird species, and one of the highest for mammals and flora. It is also the largest bastion for Roman Catholicism in all of Asia. The country is also home to one of the New7Wonders of Nature, the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, and one of the New7Wonders Cities, the Heritage City of Vigan. It is also home to six UNESCO world heritage sites scattered in nine different locations, three UNESCO biosphere reserves, three UNESCO intangible cultural heritage, four UNESCO memory of the world documentary heritage, one UNESCO creative city, two UNESCO world heritage cities, seven Ramsar wetland sites, and eight ASEAN Heritage Parks. More than 60% of Filipinos can understand and speak English, as many are multilingual.
Tourism makes an important part to the economy of the country. The growth of the economy had been into a major change since the end of the People Power Revolution up until the present time because of the growth of tourism.[citation needed]
In 2000, Philippines' tourist arrivals totaled 2.2 million. In 2003, it totaled 2,838,000, a growth of almost 29%, and was expected to grow as much as 3.4 million in 2007. In the first quarter of 2007, the tourist arrival in Philippines grew as much as 20% in same period last year. In 2011, the Department of Tourism recorded 3.9 million tourists visiting the country, 11.2 percent higher than the 3.5 million registered in 2010.
In 2012, Philippines recorded 4.27 million tourist arrivals, after the Department of Tourism launched a widely publicized tourism marketing campaign entitled "It's More Fun In the Philippines".
The 2017 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum ranked the Philippines 79th out of 136 countries overall. The country's best-rated features were price competitiveness (22nd) and natural resources (37th).
The tourism industry employed 3.8 million Filipinos, or 10.2 per cent of national employment in 2011, according to data gathered by the National Statistical Coordination Board. In a greater thrust by the Aquino administration to pump billion[clarification needed] to employ 7.4 million people by 2016, or about 18.8 per cent of the total workforce, contributing 8 per cent to 9 per cent to the nation's GDP.
The official heritage properties of the Philippines are listed under the National Government's Philippine Registry of Cultural Property (PRECUP), Pinagmulan: Enumeration from the Philippine Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS). Properties registered among those lists are heralded as possible nominations to the UNESCO World Heritage List, where at least 16 declarations containing 19 properties have been recognized by UNESCO through its 4 different lists (UNESCO World Heritage List, UNESCO Memory of the World Register, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List, and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Registry).[citation needed]
Tourism in the Philippines traces its origins during the ancient times when the first set of people chose to migrate through land bridges, followed by the other sets of migrations from the Malayan archipelago in the south and Taiwan in the north. Through time, numerous ethno-linguistic groups developed, until some of them became monarchies, plutocracies, hunter-gatherers, city-states, and so on. Trade also became part of the tourism as Arabs, Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Malays, and other ethnic groups in mainland Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Ryukyu traded goods with the natives. When the islands became part of the territory of Spain, an influx of Spanish people migrated into the country, though still few compared to the Spanish migrations in South America as the Philippines was farther from Spain.[citation needed]