No words can describe how relieved I am to be fully insured as of March 1, 2024. After 11 years of unreliable travel insurance, we paid out of pocket for my four surgeries in South Africa in 2019. The freedom of knowing I am fully covered, minus a one-time-per-year $240 deductible, gives me peace of mind I can hardly describe.
I didn’t choose a pharmacy plan since the cost was prohibitive and required I purchase my few medications in the US. Plus, the copay and using US pharmacies also didn’t make much sense. I currently take a costly blood thinner, Eliquis, with a retail cost of $594 per month.
Sure, with some Medicare pharmacy plans, one can buy this drug for considerably less. But, if we’re traveling, it will do me no good. I won’t be able to walk into a pharmacy and buy this drug at a reasonable price in most countries. In South Africa, the average cost of this medication is $65 per month.
However, I will order this drug from Canadian Pharmacy Store before we leave the US again in June. Since I began taking this drug, I have been taking Apixaban 5 mg (the generic version, but the same drug) and will order from this company as follows:
Apixaban 5mg Tablet
90-day supply (180 pills at 2 tablets per day) is $71.99.
At this rate, a 90-day supply will average $23.30 per month, a far cry from any of the above. Of course, one needs a prescription from a doctor. It’s essential to check if you live outside the US to see if they will accept prescriptions from your doctor in a country other than the US.
This is another significant relief for me. Thus, before we leave the US, I’ll order enough to get me through the next several months. How long we’ll be away will be predicated on my heart test results on March 27.
As for insurance outside the US, my Plan G supplement with Aflac allows for a lifetime maximum of $50,000, so adding an emergency evacuation plan may be necessary while we’re outside the US.
There was so much research required to come to these final decisions. Also, it was good that we were in the US these past several months to ensure we could get all the paperwork done promptly. With snail mail an issue in some countries, it would have been challenging to process everything since documents have been sent to us via snail mail.
Now, as we complete the paperwork for Tom’s claim with the law firm for his lung damage (pulmonary fibrosis) from 42½ years of exposure to asbestos while working on the railroad, yesterday we received a snail mail package with 20 documents that must be notarized. We’d never have been able to do this outside the US, using a foreign notary.
Thank goodness we were here for all of this, including when Tom flew to Chicago for the required pulmonology appointment with a designated doctor. Many of our readers have inquired why we’d chosen to be in the US for this extended period. Aside from the necessity for me to have the cardiac ultrasound in a few weeks, for which I had to wait until I was fully insured, these other situations dictated the length of our stay.
Soon, when we leave for Arizona, we’ll have our taxes for 2023 done with the help of our Nevada accountant, insurance in place, the heart scan completed, and Tom’s paperwork situation under control. Hopefully, we’ll also have good news on my scan. This will be a relief when these items have been on our minds for quite some time.
Today, we’ll enjoy our delicious pizza leftovers and a big salad. All is good in the world with us! We hope the same for you!
Be well.
Photo from ten years ago today, March 10, 2014:
