Happy to have helped an expat

Late 2020 : a retired couple volunteering for an NGO in India must leave the country because the NGO no longer receives funds and their visas have expired. They decide to leave for Nepal for 3 months, the time to see if they manage to recreate a new NGO project in India or if they return to France where they still owned a home. They subscribe a special contract for this 3 month stay.

During the stay in Nepal, Mrs. X is victim of Covid, her condition deteriorates rapidly and she has to be hospitalized in intensive care. Mr X contacts the insurer who asks him several questions about his situation and that of his wife. The insurer quickly concludes that the stay in Nepal is not a temporary stay and that it cannot cover the current hospitalization fees.

In this case, the insurer does not show any ill will, but he misinterprets the elements communicated by telephone by the insured while he is in a difficult and stressful situation, himself under strict quarantine in Nepal and with almost no means of communication with the outside world.

The insured then receives threatening calls and messages from the hospital. He transfers them to me: "U need to deposit if your insurance is not going to pay. As told earlier, your bill is increasing day by day"; "Sir u need to pay, I guess u can transfer money via online bank transfer". Without payment, they threaten to discharge his wife without care. This is not shocking in a country where private or public hospitals cannot afford to pay for the hospitalization of foreigners without receiving reimbursement.

The insured person asks us for help. We quickly put together the elements proving to the insurer that there had been a misunderstanding of the initial situation and the insurer immediately issues the payment guarantees to the hospital. Mrs X is released from intensive care a few days later and remains in the hospital for a few more days.

We are happy to have been able to intervene to unblock this file that could have gone very wrong. It wasn't a big deal, but we just were able to understand that there had been a legitimate misunderstanding about this not-so-ordinary case.