Health insurance as a perpetual nomad — what actually covers you?

Switched to an international/nomad-specific policy once I actually understood the gap travel insurance leaves. Wasn’t cheap, but the peace of mind was worth it for how I live now.

same, was uninsured for way too long out of pure procrastination, not proud of it

Worth flagging: a lot of travel policies quietly exclude cover once you’ve been away from your home country beyond a certain number of consecutive days. Easy to miss in the fine print until it actually matters.

Does anyone keep a home-country plan running in parallel, or does that stop making sense once you’re properly nomadic full-time?

Following, this is the one admin thing I keep putting off indefinitely.

Kwame, I kept a home-country plan for the first year, but it only covered me properly at home, so it was mostly peace of mind for trips back. Once I was settled in Spain I dropped it. The international policy was the one that actually mattered.

What I'd add to this thread, after two years of trying different setups: the policy that's cheapest when you're healthy is almost never the one you want when you're not. I learned that when I needed a scan in a country my first policy only covered for emergencies.

So now I check four things before anything else: outpatient cover, where in the world it applies, what happens if I'm away from my base for longer than planned, and whether I have to pay first and claim later. The last one sounds boring until you're standing at a hospital desk with a very large bill in a foreign language.

And I read the exclusions page before the price page. Every time.

Exclusions before price. That should be printed on the front of every policy. I learned it the same way Isabella did, with a bill I still think about.