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muimui
Joined: 22 May 2005
Posts: 4
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 Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 4:32 am Post subject: Nova JMA insurance? Other options? |
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Hello!
I am scheduled to go to Japan for Nova in October and am not familiar with the JMA insurance. Are there other options open to me? I heard you can purchase travel insurance from Thomas cook instead? Cheaper?Would signing up for JMA at Nova be more convenient though because that is what majority of the people do?
What would be the difference between JMA and all the other insurance plans? I really dont know much about this insurance thing.
Please advise anything you know regarding this.
Thank you so much for everyones help! |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 11:18 am Post subject: Re: Nova JMA insurance? Other options? |
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| muimui wrote: |
Hello!
I am scheduled to go to Japan for Nova in October and am not familiar with the JMA insurance. Are there other options open to me? I heard you can purchase travel insurance from Thomas cook instead? Cheaper?Would signing up for JMA at Nova be more convenient though because that is what majority of the people do?
What would be the difference between JMA and all the other insurance plans? I really dont know much about this insurance thing.
Please advise anything you know regarding this.
Thank you so much for everyones help! |
JMA is a subsidiary company to NOVA and gets most of its teachers to sign up in it as soon as they arrive in Japan. Premiums are about 6,000 yen a month. You are fine as long as you dont have any existing medical conditiions and there are things they dont cover.
Thomas Cook is plain vanilla travel insurance meant for tourists, not those living and working in a country and is for emergencies. If you get an appendectomy or require surgery you will likely have to pay the hospital up front and then apply for a refund from your insurance company. Low premiums but high risk if you get seriously ill or immobilised. Some hospitals may not accept foreign travel insurance either.
The third alternative is national health and this is where it gets sticky. Japanese law requires all full time employees including those at NOVA to have health insurance and now the unions here are trying to get NOVA to obey Japanese law, and get employees paid up in the Social Health Insurance scheme. Under this you pay monthly premiums and 30% of the bill when you go to the doctor. The problem is that though its convenient, cheap if you want immediate hospital treatment (NHI is accepted virtually everywhere), The laws require NOVA to pay 50% of your insurance premium if you are full time and you pay the other 50%. At the moment NOVA treats its full time sponsored teachers as part timers and avoids paying national health insurance on all its foreign teachers. On NOVAs razor thin profit margins, paying out insurance premiums on 4000 employees means they are looking at a bill of over a million dollars a year in insurance premiums. What they want to do is if they are made to pay is reduce teachers salaries by 30,000 yen a month to cover the increased costs of insurance premiums. This is clearly illegal, but negotiations are still continuing with teachers caught in the middle.
The upshot is you get what you pay for, your comfort levels with risk e.g. get a cheap travel insurance but you might have to front up if you get sick vs. high premiums (Social Insurance will include pension as well) you may noty get covered on private insurance, but pay only a small amount when you go to the doctor on NHI. Everyone must have some kind of insurance, its just a matter of you deciding how much you can afford and your comfort levels and what you are willing to pay out of a small income.
I also meant to mention that as JMA is a subsidary of NOVA a large slice of your premium goes straight into your employers pocket as a commission. You won't know that off course and they wont tell you.
PS Global Health Insurance seems to be a popular health insurance package for expats here. |
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Bozo Yoroshiku
Joined: 22 Feb 2005
Posts: 139
Location: the Chocolate Side of the Force
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| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 1:53 am Post subject: Re: Nova JMA insurance? Other options? |
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| PAULH wrote: |
| (NHI is accepted virtually everywhere) |
Is this a problem with JMA? Is it not accepted as much as NHI? (meaning you go to the hospital and you end up forced to pay everything without reimbursement)
Also, I thought one could not legally join JMA-like plans unless they were already part of NHI. I thought I read that somewhere, unles I just mis-read it.
--boz |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 3:10 am Post subject: Re: Nova JMA insurance? Other options? |
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| Bozo Yoroshiku wrote: |
| PAULH wrote: |
| (NHI is accepted virtually everywhere) |
Is this a problem with JMA? Is it not accepted as much as NHI? (meaning you go to the hospital.
--boz |
With JMA they do not cover some pre-existing medical conditions so you better check what your insurance will cover before you buy it. As I mentioned, its private insurance, so you may have to pay the doctor first and then get paid back by JMA. They will cover most other things though such as medical and dental.
| Bozo Yoroshiku wrote: |
[
Also, I thought one could not legally join JMA-like plans unless they were already part of NHI. I thought I read that somewhere, unles I just mis-read it.
--boz |
With NHI (or more accurately, Shakai Hoken, Social Welfare Insurance) you pay your monthly premium to the city office and when you go to the doctor you show your insurance certificate which they will keep a record of, you then pay only 30% of the doctors bill at the reception. NHI you can also have family members on your insurance, if you go back home for medical treatment NHI will re-imburse you for the medical treatment overseas. You will need to provide a copy of the bill and perhaps a doctors translation. NHI also covers childbirth and gyno costs in some prefectures so its pretty wide-ranging.
Legally you need to have health insurance in Japan but there is no law saying which one or that you MUST have private insurance etc. By law, if you are a full time salaried employee your employer is supposed to sign you up in the Shakai Hoken. You can join other plans e.g. if you are part time or you have several employers, or you work for yourself. In that case you would get the Kokumin Hoken which covers people without one employer.
Some one was asking about joining a private plan that will cover the 30% of the bill that NHI does not pay and that would mean you pay for two lots of insurance premiums, and Im not sure JMA etc would pay for treatment that is covered by other insurance. |
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PAULH
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan
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