What Medicare Covers While Traveling
There are some exceptions, including some cases where Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) may pay for services that you get on board a ship within the territorial waters adjoining the land areas of the U.S. In rare cases, Medicare may pay for services when 1) a medical emergency occurs and the foreign hospital is closer than the nearest U.S. hospital, 2) you are traveling through Canada between Alaska and another state when the medical emergency occurs, or 3) you live in the U.S. but the foreign hospital is closer than nearest U.S. hospital that can treat that condition, regardless of whether or not it is an emergency. Some Medicare supplement policies (C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J) provide Foreign Travel Emergency health care coverage for travel outside the U.S., and some Medicare Advantage plans provide worldwide coverage benefits. Medicare drug plans do not cover drugs purchased outside the U.S.
The 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa are considered part of the U.S. Also note that if the services you receive are covered by Medicare (i.e., one of the three conditions in the first paragraph are met), foreign hospitals aren't required to file Medicare claims. You will need to submit an itemized bill to Medicare for your covered doctor, inpatient, and ambulance services.
There are many other specific instances of both coverage and denial of coverage, so it is best to review this explanation on the Medicare website. If you plan on traveling outside of Medicare coverage, you also have the option of purchasing a travel health insurance policy that will cover health care services for a particular foreign trip.

Stout Bowman regularly posts important and interesting information on our blog. Current topics include credit/debit/loans, estate planning, insurance, investing, Medicare, retirement, Social Security and taxes, as well as general information that we think you might find of interest.
We have been publishing an email newsletter for our clients and friends since 2016. Links to all of the newsletters can be found on our newsletter page, with the most recent listed first. We try to keep our emails short, so there are typically only three articles in each one, most of which link to other articles in the financial and mainstream press.
We also have a page on our site for the latest news about our company, notice of any upcoming events, and a market commentary to discuss what our advisors and other financial industry experts conclude about the previous investment performance and what we might expect the markets and the economy will do in the coming months.
Many news organizations offer what is called a Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed, a listing of the latest changes to their site's content. We have subscribed to several of these news feeds and present a list of their latest ten articles on a page on this website to save our clients the hassle of going to multiple websites just to see what is available. Currently, we subscribe to
At Stout Bowman every investment client is first a financial planning client; it's important to go through that process before we make any professional investment recommendations. Therefore, we strive to make financial planning understandable and comfortable every step of the way. One way to do that is to provide our clients access to financial education resources. To that end, we have subscribed to educational websites to receive their news feeds and present a list of their latest ten articles on a page on this website. Currently, we offer