DNV health insurance questions, answered
The questions people actually ask about health insurance for Spain's digital nomad visa, in the order they come up. Start at the top: not everyone applying needs to buy a policy, and that is the first thing worth settling.
Do I need to buy anything at all?
For a lot of people this is the only part that matters, because the answer it produces is that there is nothing to buy. It is also the part most often skipped: landing on a page about insurance feels like proof that insurance is what you need.
Everything else I read says buying a policy is compulsory. Why do you say it depends?
Because the healthcare condition attached to this visa can be met in more than one way, and only one of those ways involves buying anything. Some applicants are covered by Spanish Social Security. Some stay inside another country's system under an international agreement. Where neither of those covers a person for healthcare in Spain, a policy is what the application relies on.
Which of the three describes you depends on how you work and on which Social Security system applies to you. How to work out which one is yours is the page to read first.
Who decides whether I need private insurance?
Nobody sells you the answer. It follows from facts about you: how you work, which Social Security system applies to you, and whether that system covers you for healthcare in Spain.
Three other decisions get mistaken for it. An insurer decides whether to accept a person, which happens later and only if a policy turns out to be what you need. An authority decides what to do with a submitted application. An employer decides whether to register you in Spain, which changes the facts your answer is read from. None of the three settles this for you, and neither does anything we say.
Can I buy a policy now and work the rest out afterwards?
You can, and it is the most expensive ordinary mistake in this subject. The two questions that decide whether you need to buy anything are how you work and how you will be covered by Social Security. Both cost nothing to answer, and buying does not remove either of them.
What an unwanted policy would cost you to unwind is a question for whoever is selling it, and it is much easier to ask before you buy than afterwards.
Does it matter whether I apply from outside Spain or from inside it?
Not for the part that decides whether you need a policy. That is settled by how you work and how you are covered by Social Security, and neither changes with where the application is lodged.
What does vary is what a particular consulate or office asks to see, and when. Whatever yours currently asks for comes before any general list, including ours.
How you will be covered, and who can tell you
This is the part that decides everything after it, and it is a question about your work and your paperwork rather than about insurance. It is worth answering slowly.
How do I find out how I will be covered?
Start with whether private cover reaches you at all, then work through how your Social Security decides what you have to show.
Between them they leave each person with one of four answers: covered through Spanish registration, covered from another country under an international agreement, needing a policy of your own, or not settled yet. The last is a normal result rather than a failure, and it is the most common one.
Does this reach me? → · How Social Security decides what you show →
I have more than one working arrangement. Which am I?
Possibly neither cleanly, and that is a real answer rather than an evasion. Each working relationship is judged on what it actually is rather than on what it is called, and where two point in different directions the question is genuinely open.
We do not decide it: it is a legal question with consequences well beyond insurance. Until it is answered, treat yourself as unsettled, and do not close the question with a purchase — it would still be open afterwards. Where classification needs review.
My work situation changed while the application was in progress. Does the answer change with it?
It can, because the answer follows from how you work rather than from a label attached to the application. A registration that becomes active, an employer who does or does not register you, a contract that ends: each can change the answer for the person it concerns, and it changes nobody else's.
So ask the question again for that person, and check that your paperwork still matches what is now true. A file describing a situation you no longer have is a contradiction anyone reading it can see.
Reading what you already hold
This part applies whatever the answer above turned out to be, including where it involves buying nothing. What your documents actually say is something you can check yourself, in the paperwork already in your drawer.
How do I tell whether a document covers me for healthcare or only says which system I am in?
By reading it for that one thing, which is narrower than it looks. A document can establish which country's rules apply to you with complete authority and still say nothing at all about healthcare in Spain, and answering the first question is routinely mistaken for having answered the second.
Working through it properly is a page of its own: what public-healthcare evidence has to show, and what a coordination certificate proves if you stay in another country's system.
Two of my documents point in different directions. Which one do I use?
Neither of them, yet. A contradiction is not settled by taking the more convenient document, and it is visible to anybody who reads both.
Take it back to whoever issued them, or to the office you are applying through, before you send anything. If it cannot be resolved, that person is not settled, and sending the facts for review is a better next step than buying something to cover the gap.
Should I send everything I have, just to be safe?
No. A file is not stronger for being thicker: every extra page is another surface for an inconsistency to show on, and a document whose job has not started yet has nothing to do in an application.
What to send is a question for the office you are applying through, worth asking rather than answering by volume. Sorting what you hold into what to get, what to check, what to send and what to keep is the exercise that prevents both halves of this mistake: the checklist, person by person.
If buying cover is what you need to do
These two answers assume something the ones above do not: that a policy is what this person's application will rely on. If that is still open, settle it first.
What each plan includes and what it costs sits with the plans themselves. Private cover, plan by plan.
Does the policy have to be from Sanitas?
No. We arrange Sanitas cover, so Sanitas is what the plan pages here describe, accurately and against the insurer's own published terms.
What a policy has to contain is a different question, and a standard one rather than a brand one. It is set out element by element on the requirements page.
I already hold a policy. Is it the right kind?
That question splits in two, and the second half is the one people skip. First: which kind of contract is it? A policy written around a journey and a policy written around living somewhere are built for different purposes, and the answer is in your own document — in the definitions and the eligibility conditions rather than the benefit table.
Only then is there anything to measure against the requirements, because a policy you cannot describe cannot be checked against anything. Three questions that tell you which one you hold is the exercise.
Everyone else on the application
Cover is worked out person by person, so a partner, a child or a dependent parent each needs an answer of their own. The one worth asking early is when they come into the process at all.
When do I bring the rest of the family into this?
At the start, not at the end. Cover is worked out person by person, so a family looked at after the main applicant's answer is settled is a family that has to be looked at again. The commonest way a dependant goes missing from a file is being added to it last.
Give each person their own line from the beginning. Mixed answers are normal: one person can be covered through the Spanish system while another needs a policy, and one person's strong document never speaks for anybody else. The family test, person by person.
Once the application is in
Two of these three we answer by telling you who the answer belongs to. That is not a shrug: knowing which door to knock on is usually the fastest way to the answer.
Will you tell me whether my application will be approved?
No. That decision belongs to the Spanish authority handling your application, and nothing here predicts what will be done with a file.
What you can settle in advance is narrower and more useful: how each person will be covered, what each document actually says, and whether your paperwork says what you believe it says. That is the part worth your effort.
What happens after approval?
Ask the office handling your application. The steps and the timing belong to them, and we would rather send you to the answer than guess at it.
What we can tell you is that these questions come round again. Later on your situation is looked at against facts that will have moved: an agreement has ended, a registration has become active, a family has changed. Write two lines against each document: what it showed, and where it came from. It is worth far more later than it costs you today.
How do I know what is on this website is right?
Anything we say about what an authority requires is attributed to the source it comes from, with the date we checked it. Where an answer turns on your own circumstances rather than on a rule, we tell you what you can check yourself and who can settle the rest.
So the questions you can answer today without waiting for anybody are the ones above: how each person will be covered, and what your own documents say. How we source and check this.
Read more on any of these
- What a policy has to contain — the requirements, element by element.
- What your Social Security paperwork shows — including what an A1 or an S1 does and does not cover.
- Employed, self-employed, or somewhere in between — the two situations and how to tell which is yours.
- Families — how each person is worked out, and what to do when one of them cannot be.
- The two Sanitas visa plans — what each is for, and how the choice tends to go.
- What cover costs — what moves a premium, and how a household is priced.
Every one of them is linked below.
Not the question you came with?
The questions we cannot answer on a page are the ones that depend on your own circumstances: how you work, how you will be covered by Social Security, who else is on the application, and what is already in your drawer. Tell us those and we will work through each person with you. If somebody needs nothing from us, that is the answer you will get.
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Which plan suits you depends on how you work, how you will be covered by Social Security, and how you are applying. The Spanish authorities make the final decision on your application.