Medical Insurance

Ok peeps, let’s talk medical insurance.  After flights, insurance is probably going to be the most expensive part of your program preparation.  It’s also a very important part of your preparation and your program in general so it’s important to make sure you follow the correct steps to make sure you are insured.  Medical care in the United States is ridiculously expensive and there is no public health care system like many other countries have, so you want to make sure you have insurance if you ever get sick.

Medical insurance is both a requirement of your visa from the United States government and a program requirement from Disney.  Let me make one thing very clear: without appropriate medical insurance you will not be allowed to enter the United States, nor will you be allowed to participate in the program.  Previously, you were at liberty to choose your own insurance policy and provider, as long as you met the requirements.  However, Disney now require you to go through a company known as HTH Worldwide.  This system has both pros and cons, but the fact of the matter is, there is nothing you can do about it.

Once you have officially accepted your offer, Disney will send you an email about medical insurance, including a link to the HTH Worldwide website (For some reason our emails were missing the link but I found it easily enough by googling “HTH Worldwide Disney”).  Once there, you will find that you have three different policies to choose from, all with varying prices and ranges of cover.  Take some time to choose the right level of cover and if you have never purchased insurance before, I strongly recommend you talk through the policies with someone who has such as a parent.  Also keep in mind that whilst the prices listed are ‘per month’, your insurance must be paid in full before you enter the United States.  It’s also important to remember that the prices are listed in USD.

There are a few steps required in regards to the health insurance.

Step 1: Purchasing Your Insurance

Once you have selected a policy, click on the green ‘enrol now’ button beneath it.  You will be asked to agree to terms and conditions before being redirected to an information page, which tells you what you will need to complete the application.  This is pretty important and I have a couple of notes on this: 

First it will tell you that you need the dates you will be in the USA – This is not your program dates.  You will need to be covered from the day you enter the United States through to the day you leave the country.  If you are not sure what day you are leaving the country because you want to extend or haven’t finalised your post-program travels, there’s not need to panic.  Just put your program end date and you can extend your policy at a later date.

Second, you will be informed that you need the Disney Campus Address.  Don’t panic and start searching through your emails and documents for it because if you scroll down a little bit, you will notice that it’s already been provided for you!  How handy is that?  Make sure you write down the address so you have it later when you need it.

Continuing on to the next page, you can actually start filling in the application.  The form asks for the following information:

Name

Date of Birth

Disney Campus Address

Your email address

Home country

Host country

Your arrival and departure dates in the United States

Once you’ve entered all the relevant information you will need to pay for your insurance.  Remember once again: You must pay the entire amount up front AND The amount is in USD.  The payment process is pretty standard and straightforward.  Once you’ve paid you’ll get a payment confirmation page; I’d recommend printing this page for you own records although you should get an email through with all of your policy details on it as well.

Step 2: Registering Online

A little while after purchasing your health insurance, HTH will send you a second email with information on how to register on their website.  This step is very important because you need to register to access your HTH ID Card which you will need at a later stage.

Click on the link provided in the email and follow the instructions given to register.  You will need to enter your email address, name, certificate number and policy end date, so make sure you have those details handy (they should be in your confirmation email from HTH if you’re lost).

Once you have registered successfully, you will receive yet another email from HTH advising you of your registration and providing you with a list of things you can do now that you are registered.  One of those options is very important.  Click on ‘Print your ID Card’ and you will be directed to a page that shows your policy details in a little table.  In the far right column labelled ‘print docs’ you will see a link that says ‘ID Card’.  Click on this and it will open a PDF version of your ID Card.  Print a copy out and it’s probably not a bad idea to save a copy too.  Put the printed copy somewhere safe because you will need it to gain entry in to the United States.

Step 3: Uploading your Health Insurance to DOC

At some point before your check in date at Disney, you will receive a prompt on DOC to upload your health insurance information (when these arrive is quite sporadic – mine only showed up a week before check-in but others got it earlier).  You will be asked to enter information from your ID Card and then to upload a copy of the ID Card itself.  If you have saved a copy of the ID Card to your computer, you can just upload that.  Alternatively, you can log in to HTH and print out a new one or in a pinch, scan your printed copy and upload that.

And that’s it’s for Medical Insurance.  Next we will look at the Background Check or you can return to the Masterlist.