A few months ago my kid got sick and dehydrated enough that we had to take him to the hospital, we live in Venezuela and as you may know, our health care system is on the underground, practically inexistent, you can read my post about the whole ordeal here, but to summarize, it was awful, the kid had a pretty high fever and we had to go out and try to find the medicine he needed cause the hospital didn’t have anything to get his fever down, we spend more than 12hours in the pediatric ER without any AC or fan to help with the awful heat so, yeah the whole experience was bad.

After this I decided I didn’t want to go through anything like this again ever again, thankfully my kid is not a child that gets sick often but, he is just 3 years old and a boy so you have to be aware that there may be some more ER visits in his future. Now in Venezuela to be able to go to a private hospital or as we call it here a private clinic you need to have a lot of money or… have private insurance. The baby daddy works for our national oil company and even tho they offer insurance as part of his work benefits well… as with everything government related it SUCKS and we just gave up to try and really use it.

Private Health Insurances

Way back when the country was not crazy or down in this financial nightmare, insurance companies were abundant, but as population purchasing power in the country started to fade into oblivion a lot of well-renowned companies left and stopped offering their services here, I remember my mom and dad used to pay health insurance for my sister and I that was unlimited but you had to buy vouchers for each medical consult, it was a little bit more expensive than the rest but it was worth it, I for the love of God can't freaking remember the name of this insurance company and yes I tried googling it but I can’t remember I think it was called Securitas. it was named Sanitas de Venezuela

So, I started to look around for insurance for my kid, and I was bombarded like usual by Instagram ads about this really affordable insurance policy, but I didn’t want to fall into a scam so I didn’t know who to contact about it until I found out a friend of mine from the university is now an insurance broker, I contacted him and got on learning all about the insurances and the way to pay for them in Venezuela.

_{source - an updated list of the 3 different policies that my insurance company covers}

Dollar Coverage Policy

Now in a country like Venezuela where our fiat is worth less than nothing, you need to have this insurance to cover and guarantees payments for the medical needs and emergencies you may have in a more stable coin, not like the Dollar is not a coin without issues of its own but against the Bolivar, the Dollar is 100000% more stable, I found this insurance policy from the Mercantil Seguros Company that is own by a highly prestigious bank of my country of the same name that not only guarantees an in Dollar coverage policy but also has payment facilities.

17$ a month help me sleep at night

They actually have different options and different benefits to fit different possibilities, also keep in mind that insurance varies according to age, since my kid is only 3 years old and he has no previous illnesses, I don't have to pay as much as if it were a policy for an older person.

My kid’s health insurance covers up to $50,000 USD for hospital services + $2,000 USD for funeral services with a yearly fee of only $204 USD that they give me the easy option to pay monthly so I end up paying $17 USD every month, this may not sound like a lot but, I'm a stay-at-home mom who full-time job is Hive and my boyfriend like I said works for our national oil company where he gets pay 80$ a month… 😬.

Hive like always helping me provide for my family

I feel more relaxed and secure knowing if for whatever reason my kid needs any kind of medical care I will be able to take him to a private clinic without worrying about payment or the many, many issues a public hospital brings along, this is because I got to pay my kid health insurance and this is all because of my work on Hive, I will forever be thankful for this amazing chain and all the opportunities it has presented to me and my family, changing our lives for the better in a country where even tho I'm a lawyer and my boyfriend an engineer make a living out of professions is really hard.

_{source: https://www.mercantilseguros.com/}

Recommendations when picking insurance in Venezuela

• First of all look for all the info available,
  Read and ask all the questions to the official sources, meaning even tho you may be working with a broker make sure to read up all the info on the insurance company website, a lot of them allow you to by-pass the broker completely and even contract their services online, in my case I didn’t went with my friend as a broker cause it didn’t cost me anything additional and I trust him and he helps me with every single question I may have.

• Make sure it covers what you need to cover,
  In my case, my kid thankfully is not a sick child nor does he has a disease that needs constant care, so the Mercantil Global Benefits policy works for us since it covers mostly only Emergencies and it has a waiting period of 9 months for it to cover previously existent illnesses.

• Make sure it has affiliated clinics in your city/town,
  This applies mostly to people living in small towns and/or far from the capital cities, you want insurance you can use where you live especially in emergency cases so, if it doesn't have an affiliated clinic near you and you have to travel far to get the medical attention you should look for another option.

• Ask for the facilities to pay,
  Some have the option like mine to pay it monthly, a lot required to be payable in US Dollars, for example, mine I can only pay it in Cash (Dollars), by wire transfer in Dollars and by Credit card in Dollars, so not a single Bolivares payment option. This makes it a paying in the ass for us to pay some months when we don't have easy access to dollars in cash.

• Make the payments directly to the insurance company,
  in my case, I need to go to the bank to make the cash deposit of the 17$, or I could make a wire transfer or pay with a credit card if I had access to a bank account in dollars, but I would be able to make these payments directly to the company, this way I'm guaranteeing the broker is not overcharging me or that he is keeping my money and the insurance isn't getting it.

• "Better To Have It & Not Need It, Than Need It & Not Have It"
  Now this is a saying in my country made famous by an insurance company called Multinacional de Seguros and is so true, I mean I feel a little pain every single month that I have to pay those 17$ that I could easily use to buy chocolate LOL but knowing

As always, thank you for reading me, would love to read about your own experience on this, so please leave a comment or better yet, make a post in The Motherhood Community.

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