I haven't traveled internationally before, but from what I've read it's generally recommended to buy a travelers health insurance policy, for coverage of medical emergencies, medical evacuation to home country etc.

For any women from the United States (my home country) who have done this, I am wondering if you have any recommendations on what company to buy the policy from?

Thanks much for any insights anyone many have.

----UPDATE----

As was pointed out in the comments, regular Traveler's Health Insurance policies are essentially void if the purpose for travel is medical tourism. I did more research and learned that in the United States and other countries, specialized policies are available, aptly named Medical Tourism Insurance.

I also learned that in the U.K. there is a company called Medical Travel Shield which offers insurance for medical tourism trips. I learned about it from this women's video , who spoke highly about it for her trip to Thailand for SRS. I didn't do any further research.

For people who live in other countries, such as the United States like me, here are the Medical Tourism Insurance companies I found.

Global Protective Solutions (GPS) - USA company but will insure anywhere if I understood correctly.

Seven Corners

HTH Worldwide

I took a close look at GPS, the other two are just companies I read about somewhere as being providers of this kind of insurance.

GPS offers a policy with a combination of benefits:

• 1] medical coverage for accident or illness unrelated to the medical tourism procedure you are traveling for
• 2) medical coverage related to the medical tourism procedure you are traveling for (i.e. if there are complications)
• 3) emergency medical transport (/aka medical evacuation)
• 4) trip cancellation / baggage loss

On the page to request a quote, you have to declare the procedure you are traveling for. Both MtF and FtM SRS are listed, along with many other trans surgeries.

On the quote page you can also select from four coverage levels (~USD$1000 - USD$3600). The coverage levels only seem to affect the limits for category 2 above, which are fairly low, but the limit for category 1 limit is USD$1,000,000. That's where the catastrophic risk protection is - if you picked up a local illness and got really sick, or fell down the stairs, my understanding is this coverage would kick in.

The policy's coverage for #3 (emergency medical transport) is only USD$50,000, quite a bit lower than what the US State Department recommends generally for international travel (USD$250,000). My understanding is this coverage applies to transporting you to the nearest medical facility that can provide the care you need, and if that facility is in your home country, intercontinental medical transport can get expensive.

GPS told me they could increase the coverage limit to USD$100,000 for an additional USD$38. I think I'm okay with this, figuring that with Bangkok having world class medical facilities, it's pretty unlikely that intercontinental medical transport would be needed even in the unlikely event of a serious medical situation occurring.

For #4 (travel cancellation and baggage) - I'm not sure how their coverage compares to separate policies for this. I'm also not sure if medical tourism would be an exclusion for stand-alone travel cancellation policies like it is for traveler's health insurance. Seems unrelated to me from a risk perspective, but medical tourism seems like a hot potato in the insurance industry, so I'd check the fine print.