International Students Remain a Resilient Market for Health Insurers

By Milan Korcok

Reductions in international student enrollments in universities and colleges worldwide during the pandemic years of 2019 and 2020 are expected to be reversed quickly according to multiple sources that study the travel patterns of an estimated 5 million young people seeking their college degrees abroad.

That’s good news for countries that host international students because the stakes are high, for the students, families funding their children’s futures, and for the institutions of higher learning that depend on foreign revenues to maintain their own high level of scholarship.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the opportunity to live abroad, learn or improve a foreign language, meet new people and improve one’s labour market status are among the top reasons EU students study abroad. But there is a price for achieving such advantages. As the OECD notes, public institutions in countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States charged bachelor’s level foreign students over $13, 900 USD more in tuitions and fees than they did their own national students on average in 2017/18.

OECD also reports that colleges and universities in those four countries account for approximately 40 percent of all international student enrolments worldwide, with students from China and India representing 38 and 18 percent respectively of their total foreign students.

In Canada, which over the past four years has seen a dramatic rise in international student enrollments (estimated currently by the government at 530,540--down from 642,480 in 2019 pre the pandemic), expectations for recovery are buoyant, as they are in Australia which prior to an extremely tight national pandemic shutdown drew 31 percent of its student body from other countries. And in the UK 486,645 international students represented 22 of the total student population in 2018/2019.

Certainly, these countries are generous hosts. But let’s not forget that the students’ hard-working moms and dads thereby contributed some $45 billion to the US economy, £25 billion to UK, and $37.6 billion AUD to their respective economies in 2018-2019 fiscal year.

And then the cost of insuring students away from home.

Most nations that have universal health care systems (that includes most European nations as well as Australia, Canada and the UK, but not the US) require students to have health insurance to cover them during their entire period of studies when applying for student visas. Such coverage can be through mandatory publicly-funded health insurance plans such as the NHS, private plans, or a combinations of both.  In the UK, international students can access the National Health Service if their study programs are longer than six months. If less than six months, they will need private insurance, but those options are available broadly.

In Australia, international students must obtain private Overseas Student Health Cover available from several “funds” administered by private insurers. They include quite comprehensive private health care as well as travel, home and contents, and vehicle cover for the duration of their stay. 

International students to Canada must have health insurance, either by accessing provincial insurance plans (which some provinces provide—free or by premiums), or they must enroll in plans crafted for their schools of choice and administered by private insurance companies. And they must do so in the province where their school is located  as Canada does not have a singular national health insurance program. Of particular note to European students, the province of Quebec offers “free” health insurance to students from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Romania and Sweden due to bilateral social security agreements signed by Quebec with those countries. 

The US doesn’t require applicants for the F1 student visa (primarily for undergraduates) to have private health insurance, but individual schools will either require students to enroll in a student health program (usually crafted for and administered by a private insurance company) or bring a private plan with them that meets the criteria of the one offered other students. Rarely will the school accept a public plan from another country.  Often the costs for these plans are factored into other tuition-related fees, but they can be substantial, anywhere from $1500 per school year (that’s the low end) up to more than $5,000 –many in the $3000 range. And too often they come as an unhappy “surprise”.

Navigating choices for an education abroad can be a formidable task. Fitting out the student with appropriate health insurance should be an integral part of the planning. There’s too much at stake—for the student and the parents funding the process to leave it an afterthought.

Milan Korcok is a national award wining medical writer who has been covering international medical and travel health issues for leading professionals journal in the United States, Canada, and the UK for many years. He works and resides in Florida.