Stop Overpaying: Why a 1,000 € Deductible Is the Sweet Spot for Nomad Health Insurance

Choosing the right deductible is the smartest lever you have to save money on international health insurance without sacrificing the benefits that actually protect you long term. For most healthy digital nomads, the sweet spot is around 1,000 € deductible per year, where you often save close to (or more than) that amount in premiums while keeping strong coverage.

Why a deductible makes your insurance cheaper

When you buy a policy without a deductible, you share a risk pool with people who submit every tiny claim: 3.50 € hay fever pills, a 25 € GP visit, a 40 € blood test. Each of these small claims triggers internal work at the insurer with staff handling, checking, processing and paying the invoice, which often costs several dozen euros per claim on top of the medical bill itself. Those administration costs get priced into everyone’s premium.

If instead you agree to cover the first 500 € to 1,000 € of medical costs per year yourself, you effectively opt out of this “small claims club”. The insurer receives far fewer low-value claims and can cut a huge chunk of their admin and claims handling costs. That lower cost base allows them to reduce your premium significantly. This is why the first step up in deductible (for example from 0 € to 500 € or 1,000 €) usually gives you the biggest relative discount.

Behind this sits a simple statistical reality. In a broadly healthy nomad population, annual medical costs tend to cluster in the lower hundreds. Only a minority have bigger claims each year and only a small fraction hit high costs of 10 000 € or more. The dense part of that “bell curve” is in the first 1 000 € or so. By taking that layer yourself via a deductible, you remove exactly the claims that are most frequent and most expensive to administer for the insurer.

If you are healthy and organised enough to keep a small emergency fund, a 1,000 € deductible is one of the smartest financial decisions you can make as a digital nomad. It lets you buy real coverage where it matters and stop paying for other people’s 3.50 € pharmacy invoices.
And let’s be honest: The purpose of insurance is to mitigate existential risks – not to cover minor expenses.
– Christoph Huebner, Insurance Broker

Real numbers from major insurers

To make this concrete, let us use real world examples that reflect what we see all the time in quotes for our clients: April International, Foyer Global Health, Cigna Global Health, PassportCard and COVRD.EE. The details differ, but the pattern is always the same. The savings curve is steep for low deductibles and then flattens hard.

April International – COMFORT plan (Belgian relocating to Thailand, born 1992)

Configuration: hospitalisation, medical repatriation and outpatient care, excluding optical/dental and maternity. You can find more context in our April International review for digital nomads.

What this tells you:

• From 0.00 € to 500.00 € deductible, you save roughly 529.92 € per year for taking on 500 € of risk. That is slightly more than 1.00 € of premium saving per 1.00 € of deductible.
• From 0.00 € to 1 000.00 €, you save around 750.72 € per year. The efficiency is still attractive with about 0.75 € saved per 1.00 € of deductible.
• From 1 000.00 € to 5 000.00 €, you take on 4 000.00 € more potential out-of-pocket cost, but your total saving only increases by about 441.72 € per year.

Accepting 1 000.00 € in medical bills out of your own pocket saves roughly 750.72 € per year. Accepting 5 000.00 € saves around 1 192.44 € per year in total. The extra 4 000.00 € of deductible buys you only about 441.72 € extra discount. That is exactly the kind of lopsided trade you want to avoid.

Foyer Global Health – 2026 premiums (Zone 3, age 30–34, Special plan)

Foyer’s 2026 premium sheet is a beautiful example because they simply stop the deductible ladder at 1 000.00 €. Zone 3 includes countries such as Thailand, Spain, the UK, Switzerland and others. For a full overview of benefits and regions, see our Foyer Global Health review.

Here, the first steps in deductible are extremely efficient:

• Moving to 250.00 € deductible saves about 552.00 € per year, more than 2.00 € per 1.00 € of deductible.
• Moving to 500.00 € saves about 1 008.00 € per year, still about 2.00 € per 1.00 € of deductible.
• Moving to 1 000.00 € saves about 1 680.00 € per year, around 1.68 € per 1.00 €.

Beyond 1 000.00 €, the curve would flatten so much that offering higher deductibles would hardly be justifiable. That is why Foyer does not even offer 2 500.00 € or 5 000.00 € deductibles in this setup. Their actuaries know that above 1 000.00 € the premium can only drop a little more, because the remaining risk is exactly those larger, rarer claims that insurance is meant to cover.

Cigna Silver – same person profile

For the same person profile, Cigna’s Silver plan deductibles show the same shape.

You can read this table in two lines:

• From 0.00 € to around 1 100.00 € deductible, savings per euro of deductible are still decent and might make sense for someone disciplined with cash flow.
• Once you jump to 5 500.00 € or 7 400.00 €, the extra saving per euro of deductible falls to roughly 0.20–0.25 €.

Across these insurers you see the same story. The first 500.00 € to 1 000.00 € of deductible is where the math works in your favour. Beyond that, you are mostly just shifting risk away from the insurer and onto yourself, for only marginal extra discount.

Whenever I see deductibles of 5 000 € or 10 000 € on a quote, alarm bells ring for me. In real life, those extreme deductibles almost never pay off once you run the numbers over five or ten years: One single year of major medical bills will eat up all that you have saved before.
– Christoph Huebner, Insurance Broker

PassportCard vs COVRD.EE: inpatient-only vs true deductibles

Now let us add two more examples which perfectly illustrate why the structure of the deductible matters: PassportCard and COVRD.EE.

PassportCard “Expat Comprehensive” (inpatient-only deductible)

Monthly premiums:

• 0.00 € deductible: 349.76 €
• 1 000.00 € deductible: 328.19 €
• 2 500.00 € deductible: 314.32 €
• 5 000.00 € deductible: 297.37 €

Converted to yearly premiums and savings vs 0.00 €:

This is the perfect illustration of why an inpatient-only deductible is a weak tool for saving money:

• Even at 5 000.00 € deductible, you only save about 628.68 € per year.
• The saving per 1.00 € of deductible is weak (around 0.26 € at 1 000.00 €, dropping to 0.13 € at 5 000.00 €).
• The deductible is inpatient only, so it does not touch the small outpatient claims and their admin cost, which is why the saving is so limited.

COVRD.EE Plus – deductible on inpatient + outpatient

Monthly premiums:

• 0.00 € deductible: 280.00 €
• 500.00 € deductible: 230.00 €
• 1 000.00 € deductible: 185.00 €

Converted to yearly and savings vs 0.00 €:

This is almost your textbook case:

• At 500.00 € deductible, you save 600.00 € per year (1.20 € per 1.00 € of deductible).
• At 1 000.00 € deductible, you save 1 140.00 € per year (1.14 € per 1.00 € of deductible).

Because the deductible applies to both inpatient and outpatient, the insurer really saves on those frequent small claims, and you see a strong saving per euro of deductible, exactly like in your “1 000 € deductible saves around 1 200 €” rule of thumb.

Why “inpatient only” or “emergency only” is the wrong way to save

A very common conversation at NOMADS.insure starts with a sentence like this: “I just want something for emergencies, so inpatient only is fine. That should be cheaper, right?”

On paper, an inpatient only plan looks like a neat solution. People imagine the worst thing that can happen as something spectacular and clearly hospital based: a motorbike accident, a dramatic surgery, a nasty trauma. The mental model is: you get smashed up, you go into hospital, they fix you, and you walk out of the building as a healthy fresh person.

The actual cost drivers in health insurance are very different:

• Long term chronic diseases
• Complications and infections that drag on
• The consequences of an accident that need ongoing outpatient treatment, rehab and follow-up
• Repeated diagnostics, imaging and medication over months or years

All of that sits in outpatient care or in the grey zone around hospitalisation. If you only insure inpatient treatment and ignore outpatient care, you are still exposed to exactly the risks that are most likely to cost you serious money over time.

Most healthy nomads do not have more than 200 € to 300 € per year in outpatient bills in a normal year. That is precisely why using a deductible to self-pay those small things is such a powerful tool. It is usually smarter to accept a 500 € or 1,000 € deductible on a strong comprehensive plan than to buy a bare bones “hospital only” product.

If you want to dive deeper into this angle, we have a dedicated guide on understanding healthcare costs as a digital nomad where we break down inpatient vs outpatient and typical cost patterns in more detail. You can find it in our article Understanding Healthcare Costs for Digital Nomads and Expats.

If your goal is to save money, downgrading to an emergency only plan is almost always the wrong answer. The right answer is usually a solid plan level with good outpatient and then a deductible that fits your financial comfort zone.
– Christoph Huebner, Insurance Broker

Inpatient only deductibles vs proper deductibles

There is another nuance that is easy to miss. Some insurers (like PassportCard) apply the deductible only to inpatient hospitalisation, not to outpatient care. On paper this sounds attractive. You think “nice, my GP visits and blood tests do not count towards the deductible”. From a pricing perspective it works against you.

In this structure:

• The insurer still pays and processes all the small outpatient claims.
• The expensive admin work around those claims remains.
• You only take on extra risk for hospitalisations, which are rarer but larger.

Because the insurer’s cost base for outpatient claims hardly changes, they cannot reduce the premium very much. The deductible becomes a blunt instrument that gives you less saving than it could. This is exactly why we are often critical of inpatient only deductibles in our individual insurer reviews, for example in our PassportCard review for digital nomads.

A deductible that also applies to outpatient means:

• You self-pay the first layer of the bell curve, where most of the small, frequent claims sit.
• The insurer genuinely saves on both claims payouts and handling costs.
• You are rewarded with a substantially lower premium.

The five year scenario that kills extreme deductibles

To show why very high deductibles do not make sense, it helps to look at a simple multi year scenario.

Imagine two people on a comprehensive plan similar to the April example:

• Anna chooses a 1 000.00 € deductible.
• Tom chooses a 5 000.00 € deductible.

Using the April numbers as an illustrative order of magnitude:

• Anna saves about 750.72 € per year compared to no deductible.
• Tom saves about 1 192.44 € per year compared to no deductible.

Over four healthy years with only small costs that you comfortably self-pay:

• Anna saves roughly 4 × 750.72 € ≈ 3 002.88 €.
• Tom saves roughly 4 × 1 192.44 € ≈ 4 769.76 €.

In year five you have one big medical year. Maybe you develop a serious infection, have an accident with long rehab, or are diagnosed with a condition that needs intensive treatment. Your annual costs shoot past 10 000.00 €.

• Anna pays 1 000.00 € out of pocket.
• Tom pays 5 000.00 € out of pocket.

After five years:

• Anna is still about 2 000.00 € ahead versus having no deductible.
• Tom has seen almost all the additional savings from the high deductible wiped out by that one bad year.

This is the core issue. Extreme deductibles concentrate a lot of risk into your own wallet for relatively modest extra reward. The 1 000.00 € level, by contrast, gives a strong premium reduction while keeping your maximum yearly pain at a level many nomads can plan and budget for.

So what is the smart strategy for digital nomads?

Putting it all together, here is the approach we recommend consistently at NOMADS.insure – Worldwide Health Insurance for Digital Nomads:

1. Aim for a deductible around 500 € to 1,000 €
   At this level you usually capture the majority of available premium savings. The numbers from April, Foyer, Cigna and COVRD.EE all show that the savings per euro of deductible are strongest in this range and start declining beyond.
2. Keep or upgrade to a good plan level rather than dropping to “emergency only”
   Proper outpatient coverage protects you against the long tail of chronic disease, infections and consequences of accidents. That is where the real financial risk lives.
3. Prefer deductibles that also apply to outpatient
   A deductible that only touches inpatient costs cannot unlock the same savings. You still pay for other people’s small outpatient claims via higher premiums. A comprehensive deductible aligns your behaviour with the insurer’s cost structure and is rewarded more.
4. Check the numbers, not just the marketing
   Compare the yearly premium at 0 €, 500 €, 1,000 € and any higher deductible that is offered. Look at how much you save per year, how much extra risk you take on, and how many years of “no big claims” you would need to break even if one bad year hits.
5. Be cautious with 5,000 € or 10,000 € deductibles
   Unless your financial situation is very strong and you have a specific tax or corporate reason to structure things that way, the extra savings seldom justify the risk. The five year scenario is a good mental model to check this.

If you want personalised help to apply this logic to your own situation, you can get an instant quote for your international health insurance here, book a free consultation or start with our free Insurance Guide for Digital Nomads where we explain how deductibles fit together with medical underwriting, regional pricing zones and visa requirements.

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Christoph Huebner Insurance Broker & Member of the Board

Christoph, an entrepreneurial spirit and avid traveler, has been a leading insurance industry expert since 2010. Founding a remote insurance brokerage, he turned into a perpetual traveler by 2017. Today, he's a top authority in global health insurance for digital nomads.

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