IMPORTANT - we HIGHLY recommend that you get expat medical insurance when teaching in China - note that general travel insurance WILL NOT work.
Read your contract, many schools in China will only allow for the provision of a maximum allocation or maximum reimbursement for medical treatment over an annual period.
Larger schools have their own on-campus medical center and in some cases your medical coverage will be specific and exclusive to services in this center ONLY. We do have some public schools in China that offer expat medical insurance coverage automatically as a benefit. We greatly appreciate this responsible attitude by these schools to protect their teachers.
There are national hospitals in almost every city around China. Big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and all the provincial capitals have well-equipped hospitals that employ many experienced doctors and specialists within specialized departments including traditional Chinese medicine. Many cities have specialized hospitals. Most of them have special departments for foreign experts where patients receive first-class attention. China adopts a partly free medical care service.
Yes, medical treatment is cheap in China. Yes, expat medical coverage is expensive. Consider this...
We had a teacher who had an ear infection. Minor deal. So he thought. He kept on getting them and they got worse and worse and worse. Fortunately, he had Norfolk ExPat Worldwide medical coverage. Finally he was taken to the local hospital where they immediately said they could not do anything, they didn't have anyone available who was a specialist in this area. He could not fly (altitude - pressure - eardrum rupture), he could not travel so Norfolk brought a team of doctors to him from Shanghai. This was very serious.
Another situation, middle of China, middle of nowhere, a teacher experiences pain in her rib area. Shortness of breath. Blood in her urine. This all appears in a 24 hour period. She goes to a doctor who goes white immediately. They are not equipped! A jet is scrambled and flies to where the teacher is. Her kidneys failed. The jet arrives with 6 doctors. She is hooked up to a dialysis machine and rushed to Shanghai where she is attended to and recovers completely. She has been in China for 6 years now. With the 80% coinsurance coverage she paid $8,000... imagine if she didn't have any coverage? Would she have been able to tell us her story?
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