Private health insurance for Spain's digital nomad visa
Everything about buying a policy for your DNV application: what one has to include, how to tell what you are already holding, what it costs and which Sanitas plan does what. It starts by checking whether you need one, because plenty of applicants do not.
First, check that you need a policy
Most people arrive here having already decided that they do, usually after reading somewhere that buying cover is compulsory. It is worth two minutes of checking, because the healthcare condition attached to the DNV can be met in three ways and only one of them involves buying anything.
Some applicants are covered by Spanish Social Security, through an employer's registration or their own registration as autónomo. Some stay inside their home country's system under an international agreement, and hold documents saying so. Where neither of those covers a person for healthcare in Spain, a private policy is what the application relies on.
Which of the three is yours depends on how you work and on which Social Security system that puts you in. No insurer decides it, and no insurance page can either. Two pages settle it, and neither of them is this one.
Do I need private insurance at all? → · How Social Security decides what you show →
What are you trying to find out?
Pick the one you came with. Each has a page behind it that answers it properly, with the conditions attached — which is more use to you than a shorter version of the same answer here.
Do I need to buy a policy at all? →
It depends on how you work and how you will be covered by Social Security. Here is how to tell.
What must a private policy include? →
The requirements, element by element, in one place — so you can hold a policy up against them.
Is the policy I already hold the right kind? →
Travel cover and residence health cover are different contracts. Three questions tell you which one your document is.
Waiting periods in the Sanitas visa plans →
What the visa versions of the two Sanitas plans do about them under the current terms.
What does it cost? →
What moves a premium, how a family is priced, and why a figure with no date on it is not a price.
Which Sanitas plan? →
The two visa plans, and how to tell which one suits the way you will actually live in Spain.
The order that saves the most time
These questions have a right order, and most of the wasted effort in this subject comes from taking them backwards: buying first, then working out what the application actually needed. Four steps, and the first two are free.
- Work out how you will be covered. How you work, then which Social Security system that puts you in, then whether it covers you for healthcare in Spain. If that holds for everyone on the application, a policy may be no part of your file. How that chain works.
- Read the requirements before you read about products. A policy is only worth anything measured against something, and until you know what that something is you cannot tell a good answer from a confident one. The requirements, in one place.
- Work out what you already hold. If there is a policy in your drawer, find out what kind of contract it is before deciding whether it helps. It is in your own paperwork, it costs nothing, and a policy you cannot describe cannot be checked against anything. The three questions.
- Then, and only then, look at plans. Choosing a product is the last step, and it is the only one of the four where a price belongs in the conversation. The Sanitas visa plans.
Two starting points, and they need different pages
You already hold something. A policy bought for a trip, cover attached to a card or a bank account, a plan from a previous move abroad, a scheme arranged through an employer. The first useful move is not to compare it against the requirements: it is to work out what kind of contract it is, and that answer sits in the definitions and the eligibility conditions rather than on the front page or in the benefit table. Work out which of the two you hold, then measure it.
You hold nothing yet. Then there is nothing to salvage and nothing to re-read, which makes the order above simpler: how you are covered, then the requirements, then plans. Nothing needs buying while the first two are open, and a policy bought before then is a policy bought against a guess.
Or start from your own situation
The product question and the situation question are the same question from opposite ends. If you would rather start from who you are than from what you want to know, these are the doors — and each of them can end with you needing no policy at all.
- Employed by a company outside Spain →
- Self-employed, or working through your own company →
- Not sure which of those two you are →
- Applying with a partner, children or a dependent parent →
- Relying on public healthcare, and unsure what your documents show →
Family changes the answer more often than anything else, because cover is worked out person by person. A household can perfectly well end up with different answers for different people, and one strong document never speaks for anybody but the person it names.
Not sure you need a policy?
The most useful conversation we have is the one that ends with somebody being told they do not need to buy anything. Tell us how you work, what you know about your Social Security, who else is on the application and what you already hold, and we will work through which of the three applies to each person. If it turns out to be a policy, we can help with that part too.
Spain +34 868 290 730 · UK 0203 925 8884 · US +1 646 222 5288 · WhatsApp +34 632 935 154
Ask us whether you need cover →
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.