Relocating to the US and Employer based Insurance Question
Hello,
I am interested in your insights/opinion/suggestions for my situation. I currently live in Europe and work for a US company. I have an EU work contract and EU health insurance. Due to my interest in relocating to the US, my employer (big company in the IT sector) offered to assign me to the US, take care of my visa as well as the entire relocation process. My dream came true.
If everything would have worked out according to plan, my relocation would happen right now. However, life had different plans for me. Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with cancer. I’ll spare you the details. Active treatment here in EU will start soon (I still feel fine). Of course this was a major blow. However, I won’t let go of my dream/plan to relocate to the US. It helps me mentally to pull through this tough time, even if I have to wait. My company is extremely helpful and supportive. We froze the relocation process for now but we will continue once active treatment is over and I am in recovery. According to my doctors, I will be on maintainance treatment (a daily pill) for 2 years once active treatment is over.
This means, I would have to get health insurance coverage within 30-60 days after my relocation. According to the HR department of my company, our employer based health insurance is very good. What I don’t know is, how I can make sure that my health insurance will cover the specific medication that I will need during maintainance treatment, before I actually live in the states? According to the affordable care act, pre-existing conditions have to be covered, but it feels like a chicken and egg problem. I feel like I won’t find out if the health insurance covers everything (maintainance treatment as well as scans) before I actually have insurance.
Did anyone go through a similar process/scenario? Is there anything I can do? I know that it’s still a long way to go, however, I wan’t to make sure that I do everything I can on my end, to make this happen.
Thank you
