“Be prepared” is more than the Boy Scout motto; it’s a handy rule to live by for anyone living abroad as well. In fact, what you can extend that short but famous saying to mean is that when living abroad, you need to think in advance of the most extreme scenarios you can envision and then develop a plan for coping with them. Through this exercise, it will become very apparent just how valuable medical evacuation insurance is.
It may sound crazy to say to prepare for the worst when you are simply departing for a study abroad trip. After all, spending a semester studying overseas at a university should be one of the very best experiences of your life, right? It definitely should, but that does not mean that unpredictable forces will not converge to ruin it.
Injury and illness are simply an inherent part of any type of travel. You must calculate these two unpredictable forces into your travel planning. When you are spending time abroad, this means taking into account the fact that getting treatment may not be as simple as it sounds; certainly it is not as simple as getting treatment in your native country.
And if the accident, injury, or illness is severe enough, you may require repatriation or evacuation to your native country. This work is done by extremely skilled professionals via medevac plane or helicopter, and their services do not come cheap. But if you need the service, worrying about price is the last thing you want to concern yourself with. That is why it is so important to have the protection offered by medical evacuation insurance.