If you've searched the internet for private health insurance that covers expats in Barbados then you are most likely for looking for established UK based health insurance providers that can cover your medical expenses in Barbados.
Living as an expat in Barbados you want to avoid any nasty unexpected medical costs. In some countries these can amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds for serious conditions.
Our advice when looking for private medical insurance that covers expatriates living in Barbados is to speak to a health insurance broker. Health insurance is very complex and if you want absolute certainty that Barbados is covered by your policy you should consult with a health insurance broker who can explain which policy providers will cover medical expenses for expatriates in Barbados and which will exclude it.
There are many advantages to using a broker but the biggest by far is that you're using their insurance training at no cost. They are paid by the insurer (Aviva or Bupa etc) rather than you so it costs you no extra to use their brokering services.
- Do you reside in many different areas? Some will give you a lower policy premium than offers. A broker will be able to advise whats best.
- Do you have a hobby that may invalidate your insurance policy? A broker will know this critical information.
- If you are a couple and one of you has claimed on your policy this year would it be cheaper to separate you both onto two different policies?
- You've lean't you're at risk of developing a certain condition and want to know which policy provider offers the largest amount of cover for it. A broker will know this instantly saving you huge amounts of time and effort.
You can call around every medical insurance provider on the market and ask if they provider cover for expats in Barbados, however this will be a very time consuming process. Each insurer will ask for your medical history because its not normally a simple yes or not if a medical condition is covered or not.
Its much quicker to speak to one medical insurance broker which will know which providers on the market offer cover for expats in Barbados and under what terms they do or don't cover it.
Barbados Information
Since the island country's independence in 1966, the economy of Barbados has been transformed from a low-income economy dependent upon sugar production into an upper-middle-income economy based on tourism and the offshore sector. Barbados went into a deep recession in the 1990s after 3 years of steady decline brought on by fundamental macroeconomic imbalances.[citation needed] After a painful re-adjustment process, the economy began to grow again in 1993. Growth rates have averaged between 3%–5% since then. The country's three main economic drivers are: tourism, the international business sector, and foreign direct-investment. These are supported in part by Barbados operating as a service-driven economy and an international business centre.
By the end of 2012 the Barbados economy still exhibited signs of weakness. Their main export (12.53% a value of $96.5 million) is liquor, closely followed by frozen-fish (8%) and preserved-milk (6.23%) to Nigeria (a total of 41.38% at $319 million) with nearly three-quarters of the imports (61.05% at $3 billion in natural-rubber and cocoa-beans) originating from there. Although it is often quoted that Barbados' main produce is "sugar", there are only two working sugar factories remaining in the country (in the 19th century there were 10). At the end of 2013, Barbados' economy continued to exhibit signs of weakness. In June 2018 Barbados announced the default on its bonds, after revealing that its debt amounted to $7.5 billion (the fourth highest debt in debt-to-GDP ratio in the world).
Since the first settlement by the British in 1625, through history the economy of Barbados was primarily dependent on agriculture. It had been recorded that minus the marshes and gully regions, during the 1630s much of the desirable land had been deforested across the entire island. In the 1640s,
Barbados shifted from small-scale mixed crop farming using indentured labor to large-scale sugar production, introduced by the Jewish community that immigrated to Barbados when exiled from Dutch Brazil. Land was divided into large estate-plantations, with a labor-force that was almost entirely made up of enslaved men and women.
Sugar cane became the single best move for the Barbados economy at the time. Barbados soon had built so many windmills that the island had the second highest density of windmills per square mile in the world, after the Netherlands. For about the next 100 years Barbados remained the richest of all the European colonies in the Caribbean region due to sugar. The prosperity in the colony of Barbados remained regionally unmatched until sugar cane production caught up in geographically larger countries such as Jamaica and elsewhere. Despite being eclipsed by larger makers of sugar, Barbados continued to produce the crop well into the 20th century.
While the emancipation of African slaves in the British Empire in 1833, nominally liberated the slaves, limited access to education and land kept the freed as a disenfranchised underclass. As such, emphasis began to be placed on increased labour rights as well as upward mobility and strong education to combat plantation living.
During the 1920s, politicians in Barbados started a push for more self-government along with Barbados seeking to retain more of the profits from economic growth within the country. Much of the profits were being repatriated by the British government to the United Kingdom. As the 1940s–1950s rolled around, Barbados moved towards developing political ties with neighbouring Caribbean islands. By 1958 the West Indies Federation was created by Britain for Barbados and nine other Caribbean territories. The Federation was first led by the premier of Barbados, however the experiment ended by 1962. Later Barbados tried to negotiate several other unions with other islands, yet it became likely that Barbados needed to move on. The island peacefully negotiated with Britain its own independence and became a sovereign nation at midnight on 30 November 1966.
After the country became independent of the United Kingdom on 30 November 1966 sugar cane still remained a chief money-maker for Barbados. The island's politicians tried to diversify the economy from just agriculture. During the 1950s–1960s visitors from both Canada and the United Kingdom started transforming tourism into a huge contributor for the Barbadian economy. The man-made Deep Water Harbour port at Bridgetown had been completed in 1961, and thereafter the island could handle most modern oceangoing ships for shipping sugar or handling cargoes at the port facility.
As the 1970s progressed, global companies started to recognise Barbados for its highly educated population. In May 1972 Barbados formed its own Central Bank, breaking off from the East Caribbean Currency Authority (ECCA). By 1975 the Barbadian dollar was changed to a new fixed / constant rate of exchange rate with the US$ with the rate being changed to present day US$1 = BBD$1.98 (BBD$1.00 = ~US$0.50).