also called trip insurance
Short-term cover for a trip, typically for emergencies, cancellations and lost belongings, not ongoing healthcare.
Travel insurance is short-term cover for a trip, built around emergencies, cancelled flights and lost bags rather than ongoing medical care. It is a lighter thing than international health insurance, which is meant for actually living abroad. It fits a holiday, but it often shuts off if you stay too long, start working, or need treatment for a condition you already manage.
You buy a cheap annual travel policy for a long spell overseas and try to claim when a chronic condition flares up. The insurer points to the wording: the policy is for trips and emergencies, not for ongoing treatment of something you live with, and the claim is denied.
It suits holidays but often excludes long stays, working, or treatment of chronic conditions that longer travel needs.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
Travel insurance covers a trip and assumes you have a home health system to go back to, paying mainly for emergencies, cancellations and lost bags; travel medical insurance is the thinner version focused only on emergency treatment while travelling, and Schengen travel insurance is a travel policy that meets a visa's minimum.
International health insurance and expat insurance are ongoing plans that replace a home health system while you live somewhere else, and nomad insurance is a start-and-stop version sold to people already on the move.
A reciprocal healthcare agreement is not insurance at all but a deal between two governments, which the EHIC and GHIC cards let you use, while health system enrollment is joining a country's public system as a resident.
Home country exclusion and exclusion describe what these policies deliberately leave out.
Expat insurance · Health system enrollment (abroad) · International health insurance · Nomad insurance · Reciprocal healthcare agreement · Travel medical insurance
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