Paying for health insurance with foreign cards

[sergio]

This was talked about here awhile ago. Does anybody pay for their health ins with a foreign card? I heard the govt may prohibit this. Any news on this?

 

[Bv3]

I have done it, but it was over a year ago. They wouldn't do an automatic payment with a foreign card, I had to go to the Swiss Medical office each month to pay.

 

[va2ba]

We used a foreign debit card to pay the payments on our insurance. But that was until June of last year.

I don't know if you can still do it, but I would suggest not doing any automatic bill paying even if you are able to.

 

[steveinbsas]

When I was living in CFI was able to charge six months in advance to my AmEx with Medicus.

 

[glasgowjohn]

I use a UK visa card to pay for an OSDE plan

 

[florence]

I pay my Medicus bill every month on the phone using their electronic service and a US card.

 

[TrevorCito]

Yes you can but like most things here it can be a hassle.

Swiss medical runs a December promotion whereby you get a discount and no price increases for a year if you pay the whole year up front. I pay with my credit card but need to visit their office. Its not a seamless process though as the last time my card was declined for several days for no apparent reason. I was told my bank declined the transactions but after phoning my bank was advised that the transactions hadn't even come through. So after repeated attempts over several days and increasingly vocal complaints from me it went through. Was it worth the effort? I'm sstill undecided....

 

[irina]

I pay for my Swiss Medical plan with my US mastercard, I have it set up for automatic deductions and I have had zero problems.

 

[tez]

I paid for my OSDE with a US credit card for 3 years using the pagotelefónico or whatever it was called. It seemed like it was fine and I always got a confirmation number, until one day my credit card was charged US$600 by OSDE. I go talk to them and they are, as you can imagine, stumped. I was there for a while watching the guy come and go scratching his head, not quite sure who to talk to about this issue. In the end, at my suggestion, I let them keep the money in return for credit to pay my next several months. That was OK for me, but I was OK with fronting the cash. Not quite sure how it would have been resolved had I not offered this...

This isn't all though: They charged me the US$600 in October, and although I had been paying my bill every month, when I went in they let me know that the charges hadn't even been registered for the previous several months, including the month I was overcharged. So I was paying too much and in default at the same time. Amazing.

THEN after this happened and my "credit" finally ran out I decided to pay the bills with cash at a Pagofacil, which was OK. I started paying again in April I think it was, and I went to see a doctor in June only to be told that my OSDE was in... what do they call it? The point was I couldn't use it. Annoying! Especially since I had to wait a month to get the appointment!! I had to go in to OSDE and they did fix it then, but the damage had been done. This was all 2010-2011 that I started having problems, but since I was already debating dropping them, I decided that it was time. Even though I did have 2 years of no problems. (Pay attention businesses!)

So that was my experience paying for health insurance with a foreign card.

 

[jimdepalermo]

My partner has been paying monthly OSDE charges with a US credit card for several years with no problems.