Health Insurance

Now I’m back, I can start to fill you in on the great adventure which was a day in Rhodes. The reason for the trip was to have our annual health checks under the private insurance policy we have. Mine is a full policy. As I no longer work for someone else, I need to have health insurance – for my own peace of mind rather than for a requirement of law or residency (at the moment). I’ve had it for nearly four years now, and as an add-on, I have these annual check-ups. Neil, in the state system generally, also opted to buy this add-on as its own policy. I can’t remember the exact cost, around €200.00 each, I think. We have it with Axa, but there are other insurance companies around who you can approach.

You’ll be thinking, ‘that sounds expensive’, but let me explain. Before having this arrangement, we used to go to Rhodes each spring for a general check-up with private doctors that we paid for as we went along. One of the many good things about living in Greece is the abundance of private doctors and the way you can phone for an appointment and see a specialist that day if necessary, or very soon after. Yes, you have to pay, but a consolation is usually only around €50.00, with many doctors also taking IKA patients (public health insurance if you like) on certain days. We used to see three different doctors in three different places, and one of the would usually call for blood tests, which we would need to get done anyway. The last time I went down this ‘see to it yourself’ route, I would pay roughly €180 for the specialists and then the blood tests would be around €120. When I was also on IKA, the state would pay something like 75% of the costs for the tests, but not the consultations.

So, what used to cost me around €300 for annual peace of mind and, more importantly, early diagnosis of anything I was unaware of, now costs me €200.00, so that’s a good starting place. And then there’s the convenience. Our agent makes the arrangements, she even picks us up from the boat, as she did last Friday, welcomes us like family and drives us to Euromedica, the private hospital on Rhodes. We arrived there on Friday at 9.35 and were seen to and dealt with by 10.54. We were back in Mandraki by 11.10 with the rest of the day ‘at leisure’ until the boat at 19:00. Back at the hospital, our ‘day’ of check-ups included having our blood taken and tested for everything from PSA to sugar levels, a chest X-ray and a check from a cardiologist, wired to the machines, a chat, a physical and so on. The cardio results are done there and then (all fine, clear and healthy for us both), and the x-ray and blood results come back next week. Our agent will collect them for us, or I can go and get them, and if anything shows up, the doctor will ask to see us. Or, we can take our results to the local general practitioner and have them interpreted there.

There’s a lot of uncertainty around this harmful Brexit mess and where us non-Greek immigrants will stand if the yUK kills off its future by leaving the EU. Private medical cover is one of the things you will need to have, and show to have, if you are not in the IKA or another state system. If you think you will need private health cover, my advice would be to start it now. The older the client, the more the insurance will cost, and some things are not covered for the first one, two or three years until full coverage kicks in (things like undetectable hereditary diseases and knee replacements), but after that, full cover is in place. There is a range of cover-options, so if it gets too costly you can opt for less of a package, but of course, that means less cover. I started mine off aged 53, and it came in at around €90.00 per month. That was about the same as Symi Dream used to pay each month for my IKA. I also went for the full cover, so now I have everything covered from being airlifted off the island and taken to Athens, Crete or wherever (hopefully that won’t ever be necessary), a private double room at a private hospital with Neil housed and paid to give me pastoral care, or I can have private nurses on top of the medical nurses already covered), and I can choose where I have any work or care seen to. If I opt for state hospitals, I pay no excess. I’m also covered for travel insurance medically, and if I want, I can have treatment in just about any country in the world, though I would have to pay 10% or 20% of that bill.

Anyway… People often ask about health cover, and as it was the purpose of our trip last week, I thought I’d mention it here. If you want to look into it and find out if you are eligible (not everyone is, it depends on existing conditions which is why I say get in early) then I suggest you search around for your local companies. I, as I said, use AXA.

That’s the Friday morning seen to. I’ll tell you more about the other, more exciting adventures of the trip tomorrow.

Share on Facebook

And a few more for the weekend.

Share on Facebook

Symi Photos

It’s just some random Symi Photos today and tomorrow as we’re heading for the Blue Star this morning – we will be back later today, but I thought I’d keep things going with some random images, so I don’t have to think of anything to write for the next few days. Just to say, it’s Thursday morning as I do this, and there’s no rain. I can see blue sky and a few clouds, but it looks like that latest storm front has now passed us over.

Share on Facebook

Heading to Tilos

I’m looking ahead to the end of May when I shall be going away for a week. Once again I have booked the Eli Bay on Tilos, the same place as I stayed three years ago. Below are a few photos I took then. The plan is to write for a week and pick up my tried and trusted daily routine which runs something like this:

Wake early, usually around 6.00 if not before. Take a long walk along the seafront and back to clear the head. Open the laptop and sit down to work around 7.30. Work through until coffee time, take a break in the town square while the room is cleaned – they do it every day there. Another typing session until lunch, usually taken in the square or on the terrace as the mood strikes. An afternoon session that runs until around 5 pm when I shut up shop, change, take another walk if I feel like it, and then head to the square and dinner with my notebook.

As you might gather, I am there to write not swim or ramble, though I usually try and take one afternoon off for a stroll up the hills. It’s a working ‘holiday’ away from the distractions of home, and last time I was there, I managed 37,000 words during the six days. Getting there and back from Symi is easy but can only be done directly on a Friday on the Blue Star. (The alternative is via Rhodes.) That means arriving late in the evening, 10.00 I think, and leaving early in the morning, currently 6.00. On one visit, the boat left Tilos at 5.00, and that was on the Diagoras, it’s a bit faster on the Patmos.

So, I have that to look forward to, and hopefully, by then the rain would have gone, and we’ll be black to spring/early summer sunshine again. Btw, we are heading to Rhodes on Friday, so there may or may not be a blog over the next couple of days.

Share on Facebook

The big bang

That was a big bang. I’m sitting here on Tuesday morning, tapping away on the keyboard, wishing I could type and listening to the rain when suddenly there’s this loud crackle right outside the window, followed a second later by an earth-shaking crash of thunder and flash of lightning. Possibly the loudest and closest I’ve heard here on Symi. Luckily we had just unplugged the computers and the internet. We do this every time there’s a suspicion of a thunderstorm because, in the past, several people have lost their routers and even PCs to a storm. It’s not so much the electricity to the router, but the phone cables. Any hint of a dangerous connection via the power supply and a fuse somewhere will trip out to protect your devices and wiring, but there’s no such safety mechanism with the phone lines.

So, Tuesday, another dark day in the house with water pouring on us from above, loading up the sterna only to drain away again within a couple of hours, some of it dripping where it penetrates cracks under doors or windows but, in this house, manly keeping its leaks confined to the door above the bathroom, as I mentioned the other day. Still, it’s a good excuse to unplug the social media and PC and turn my attention to books and paper. I am writing this on battery and will upload it later when the storm has passed. The way things have been going recently that might not be until May. Joking. The forecast is showing the rain clearing during Thursday. We shall see.

Ps, these photos don’t show you the amount of rain, but when you see an island only a few hundred yards away completely disappear, you know it’s heavy.

Share on Facebook