When your parents come to the United States, what should you think about regarding their healthcare?
If they come here for a short-term visit, like a six-month stay, a short-term healthcare insurance for visitors could be your choice, but those usually don’t cover for existing conditions. If your parents have chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, heart diseases, etc, they may need medications and maybe some visit to the clinic or emergency room.
US healthcare insurance is largely based on employment and due to parents’ immigrant status (B1/2 visitor visa), there are very limited choices for healthcare insurance. A few options are as belows, but I suspect better knowledge is with local healthcare brokers.
-some employment-based healthcare insurances allow you to add parents as dependents, such as VA or Tricare
-some supplemental healthcare insurance offers some cost deduction by providing low out-of-pocket costs
-some visitor healthcare insurances offer choices for acute onset of pre-existing conditions
So what if an emergency happens and parents are not insured or under-insured?
-emergency rooms, according to law, all the ERs in the US have to accept patients no matter what, so they will be seen in the ER but you are going to expect to receive some bills with large numbers. Well, you can negotiate with their billing department later but it is always not pleasant to receive a bill that may make you broke. But if there is really any life emergencies, don’t hesitate to bring your parents to ER.
-free clinics or fee-scaled community health centers, usually different states and cities have some free clinics run by government or charity groups but they usually open on 9-to-5 regular hours. If they need hospitalization, the social workers at a hospital will help you apply for emergent Medicaid (depends on states), which will cover the costs of in-patient stay.
-private cash-only clinics, you can find some private clinics in lower Manhattan/Chinatown or Flushing, NY that accept cash for visits.
-call your own primary care physician and see if he/she can fit your parents into a schedule and charge a reasonable fee based on cash or fee-scale.
-some cash-based telemedicine services
How about medications?
They can bring enough medications to the United States for the duration of stay.
Or
-some pharmacies provide low-cost common medications like CVS, Target, Walmart’s low-cost Rx program
-use GoodRx for wholesale prices for medications
-ship medications from home from mail but sometimes the Customs may be scrutinous about that since there are regulations to prevent smuggling cheaper medications to the US
If you have any experience exploring the US healthcare system with immigrant parents, share it in the comments section!
Inside a hospital 