Caring About Health Care

Health care is crucial for Wycliffe Canada personnel serving outside of the country. Provincial government health-care plans vary, but they don't generally extend adequate coverage to residents leaving Canada. Provincial coverage may pay a maximum of $50 per night for a hospital stay outside of Canada, for example, whereas it may cost $1,000 or even more per night on foreign soil. Being without adequate insurance could personally bankrupt a Canadian needing medical treatment away from home.

So, to protect its foreign staff, Wycliffe Canada has a Foreign Medical Plan (FMP), provided through a leading private insurance company.

It is mandatory for all foreign–assigned personnel, unless their country of assignment has its own mandatory plan which has adequate coverage and therefore supersedes the FMP, says Margaret Janke, Wycliffe Canada’s FMP administrator. Canadian Wycliffe staff working in the U.S. are excluded from the FMP, so they must make other arrangements. That leaves 37 single staff, 21 couples and 28 families serving around the world covered by FMP when this article was written.

Janke says the plan covers the full cost of medical treatment, doctor and nursing services, hospital expenses, drug costs and medically related evacuations within a foreign country and back to Canada, if necessary.

But such coverage comes at a price.

In 2009, the FMP cost foreign-serving staff $332,000 in premiums, says Janke. “For staff under 70 years of age, for example, rates can range from $150/month for a single Wycliffe missionary, who has provincial coverage, to $692/month for a family without it.”

These premiums must be included in the amount of financial support Wycliffe missionaries raise from churches and individuals.

Keeping premium rates affordable is the main challenge of the FMP for a variety of reasons, says Janke. Worldwide, the cost of health care is escalating. Also, some Wycliffe Canada personnel are serving in field locations where there is no adequate health care available, so they must evacuate elsewhere.

As Wycliffe’s staff ages, health problems naturally increase too. As well, a relatively small group is paying premiums into a plan to cover claim payouts.

Another challenge is making sure that overseas staff maintain their provincial health coverage while away, she says. “If a person does not have current coverage it can be difficult to transfer them into a Canadian hospital. Some provinces have a three-month waiting period for coverage to start.”

Despite these challenges, health care is simply one of the important and unavoidable costs faced by Canadian Wycliffe staff serving Bibleless people groups around the globe.

“If you are overseas and get treatment in an expatriate facility, the cost can be staggering,” says Janke. “Historically, our maximum coverage per accident/illness has been $250,000, and there have been two situations in the past four years where the expenses were approaching this limit.”