Ray Carpenter was our guest speaker on September 2, invited by Ginny. She worked as a nurse for many years in the US and is now retired and living near Ubud. Here she finds herself in the role of "village nurse" helping local families, and also has found many expats are seeking her advice on medical insurance. As a result, she has been keeping watch on various products offered and talks to people about which product they use, and the outcomes.

Since many expats have some form of cover in their home country, if a medical problem is developing in Bali, the first option is to take a commercial flight home. Sometimes this is not feasible, and in these cases medical evacuation is needed - but as this may cost as much as US$120,000 - without insurance most people could not afford it.

Ray, herself uses Travel Guard (a plan called My Travel Guard), and also mentioned AccessAmerica.

Then she touched on other health issues including immunization (she recommended oral protection for typhoid fever) and blood types (make sure you know your blood type - and that others will be able to find it). She provided copies of 2 articles from The Bali Advertiser - these were:

So you want to live in Bali? Health Considerations Part 1

So you want to live in Bali? Health Considerations Part 2

There was lively interest with plenty of questions.