Guide To Health Insurance in Spain
This article on health insurance in Spain, also commonly known as medical insurance is designed to help you get the lowest and cheapest quote for your health/medical insurance. If you are considering buying/taking out health insurance and you want to find out how much health insurance in Spain costs then read on and we will give you actual examples.
Most expatriates searching for quotes for private heath insurance in Spain will mainly be in the popular expat areas on the Costa del Sol (especially Marbella, Puerto Banus, Benalmadena, Fuengirola, Torremolinos, Nerja, Malaga), the Costa Blanca (especially Alicante, Benidorm, Calpe, Moraira, Torrevieja), the Costa Brava, Madrid, Barcelona or the islands of Spain such as Tenerife, Lanzarote, Majorca/Mallorca, the Canary Islands and Menorca.
If you already have health insurance in Spain and you are looking to renew then obviously you want to renew your health insurance for the lowest possible price.
How To Find Cheap Health Insurance in Spain
Try going to an insurance brokers in Spain who will be able to compare quotations from many different providers of health insurance as this will potentially save you enormous amounts of time (as well as money) rather than contacting all the insurance companies in Spain directly yourself.
Try also find a health insurance price comparison search engine which will take your specifications and instantly search online and compare prices for the cheapest health insurance on the market. Always shop around as health insurance in Spain is generally expensive.
Do take into consideration your language skills. If you are not fluent in Spanish then it is important to take out health insurance with policy documents issued in English. Otherwise you won’t fully understand what you are covered for. Don’t take the agent or brokers verbal explanation as when it comes to claiming on your health/medical insurance you will be the one footing the bill if you find you are not properly covered. So check the small print and ask questions until you are 100% sure the policy if what you want.
The subject of health insurance in Spain is so important because many people who move to Spain are of an age where they are very likely to need increasing amounts of medical and health care.
Clearly people do not want to move to a country where they cannot receive a decent standard of heath care.
We do need to point out that Spain does have a good (according to most people) national health service or public health system. However it does not follow that you are automatically entitled to free heath care, but that is covered in more detail elsewhere, so we need to look at private medical options. You may also find our related page on critical illness cover in Spain useful and helpful.
Even if you are entitled to free medical care on the Spanish state service you may just like in your home country prefer to go private as it has many advantages, principally much shorter waiting times for treatments and operations. Perhaps you feel the doctors are better.
This page will presume you need to find private medical care and look at your options for finding the best health insurance.
A major Spanish private health care provider is Sanitas who are part of BUPA. Sanitas has plans that start from €15 a month, they have special private hospitals with bilingual staff.
If you need more help with other types of insurance in Spain then see our home page which contains many links to many different types of insurance coverage available for people living in the country of Spain.