If you've searched the net for health insurance that covers expats in the Dominican Republic then you are most likely for looking for trusted UK based health insurance providers that can cover your medical costs in the Dominican Republic.
Living as an expatriate in the Dominican Republic you want to avoid any nasty unexpected medical costs. In some countries these can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds for very serious conditions.
Our advice when looking for private medical cover that covers expatriates living in the Dominican Republic is to speak to a insurance broker. Health insurance is extremely complex and if you want absolute certainty that the Dominican Republic is covered you should talk with a medical insurance broker who can explain which providers will cover medical costs for expatriates in the Dominican Republic and which will exclude it.
There are many advantages to using a insurance broker but the largest by far is that you're using their industry experience 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 premium than offers. A broker will be able to advise whats best.
- Do you have a hobby that may invalidate your insurance claim? 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 medical condition and want to know which insurer 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 the Dominican Republic, 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 policy providers on the market offer cover for expats in the Dominican Republic and under what conditions they do or don't cover it.
The Dominican Republic Information
Tourism in the Dominican Republic is an important sector of the country's economy. More than 6 million tourists visit the Dominican Republic, making it the most popular tourist destination in the Caribbean and putting it in the top 5 overall in the Americas. The industry accounts for 11.6% of the nation's GDP and is a particularly important source of revenue in coastal areas of the country. The nation's tropical climate, white sand beaches, diverse mountainous landscape and colonial history attracts visitors from around the world.
As one of the most geographically diverse nations in the region, the Dominican Republic is home to Pico Duarte, the Caribbean's tallest mountain peak, and Lake Enriquillo, its largest lake and lowest elevation. The earliest cathedral, castle, monastery and fortress built in all of the Americas is located in Santo Domingo's Colonial Zone, an area declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Due to political conflicts and warfare that had been present throughout most of the country's history, there was little tourism in the Dominican Republic until the 1930s. Tourism remained relatively slow during this decade, with only 230 foreign tourists arriving in the country, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo's rise to power represented a turning point for this facet of the economy. During the 1940s, Trujillo initiated the development of eight government-owned-and-operated resorts in the capital of Ciudad Trujillo (now Santo Domingo) to foster the growth of a tourism industry. The most famous of these developments was the Hotel Jaragua, which gathered international attention for its luxury, alongside the Malecón de Santo Domingo in 1942. Many of the hotels built during this time remain open and include: the Hotel Provincial, which is now a children's hospital; the Hotel la Paz, now known as the Hotel Hispaniola; and the Hotel Comercial in the Colonial Zone, which was the first privately-owned hotel in the country.[citation needed]
Hotel development was not limited to the capital. Several provincial capitals were the site of Trujillo's public works projects. These included the Hotel Matún in Santiago de los Caballeros, the Hotel Guarocuya in Barahona, the Hotel Maguana in San Juan de la Maguana, and the Hotel Montaña in Jarabacoa. The building of the Hotel Macori in the San Pedro de Macorís Province was the first development in the eastern end of the country, which has now become the country's main tourist destination.[citation needed]
In 1955, the Fair of Peace and Fraternity of the Free World (Feria de la Paz y Confraternidad del Mundo Libre) was organized in Ciudad Trujillo, to honour the 25th year of Trujillo's rule. The event was intended to attract international visitors and showcase the development of the country's tourism industry, but attendance was below expectations and foreign investments failed to materialize.[citation needed]
In the 1950s, construction of the Las Américas International Airport took place, along with highway systems to connect it to the capital and better accommodate the country's growing number of tourists. The Cuban Revolution and resultant embargo served to redirect American tourists to Ciudad Trujillo as the Latin American tourism destination of choice. Conversely, political instability and social unrest in the wake of the assassination of the Mirabal Sisters in 1960, the assassination of Trujillo in 1961, and the Dominican Civil War of 1965 and subsequent US military occupation, led to a notable decrease in tourism.[citation needed]
In the post-civil war era, the tourism industry of the country saw an upswing through increased government attention and changes in economic policies. In 1971, the Tourist Incentive Law (Law 153) was passed to create the Department for the Development of Tourism Infrastructure (INFRATUR). Its aims were to promote infrastructure projects, encourage private investment, and cooperate with the Ministry of Tourism to further grow the tourism industry. By encouraging private investment through low-interest loans, the Dominican Republic underwent two distinct periods of hotel and resort building that increased the number of hotel rooms from 1,134 in 1970 to over 20,000 by 1990. The country also saw the number of tourists increase from 278,000 in 1975 to over one million visitors by 1987, surpassing traditional Caribbean resort locations.
From the 1990s, the Dominican tourism industry has been developed and operated at its fullest, developing more housing complexes, through agreements and foreign advisors. Consequently, the number of hotel rooms in the decade of the 1980s was about 8,562 and the 1990s was 45,000.
In 1997, around 270,830 foreign tourists arrived by sea, of which 156,099 used the ports in Santo Domingo, 5,566 arrived via the port of Puerto Plata, 108,698 disembarked in La Romana, 404 in Samaná and 63 in Boca Chica. This figure compared with those of 1996, it shows that in 1997 the number of foreign visitors who used the waterway increased by over one hundred percent.