OHIP Extended Coverage
 

My partner and I are leaving on our extended journey at the end of September for an undetermined amount of time (more than one year). I am researching travel health insurance but am finding that most plans require the traveller to be covered by a provincial plan as a requirement of coverage.

I understand that under the new Ontario guidelines, a resident can have continuous coverage for 2 years if they have applied for an extension. It seems as though the extension is only available for work/study/or charitable reasons. As we aren't really planning to encorporate work, study, or charity (this one is a maybe), I was wondering if anyone had applied to get extended OHIP or provincial coverage for strictly travelling purposes??

Residency is a bit of a moving target and depends for what reason a person is trying to maintain residency. Most people head off travelling and pop back home at least once if they are gone as long as you are planning for.

I would guess that as long as you keep a mailing address, keep paying your monthly premiums and start off your trip as a three month journey that happens to get extended a few times, then at least you have a plausible argument to maintain your residency in ON for at least medical coverage. I cant speak for Ontario, but in B.C. since it's universal healthcare as well, they are more concerned about collecting premiums as small as they are and less if you have been filtering in and out of the province. If it were full on private insurance, I would guess the rules are a lot more rigid.