My son is going to England to study abroad this semester. What does he do about a phone plan? Also, he takes some medications that are controlled substances, one is every 30 days for a refill (psychiatric np won’t give him 90). I think she told him to find a provider in England, I don’t see that working out. She also mentioned having me mail them to him, which I don’t think is entirely legal. It’s for anxiety/depression, maybe bipolar, not ADHD. He handles his meds himself. He leaves in the 19th. He just applied and was approved for a no foreign transaction fee credit card (plus has his debit and is an authorized user on ours for emergencies). He secured health insurance and housing. He’s our 5th and not as independent as our others, he’s a senior.
Have you asked the school study abroad office?
I’m sure these are questions they’ve heard before.
Is the school he’s attending a US Branch or English school? I’d imagine either would also have local staff that has dealt with these issues with US students.
I’d start there, if you haven’t - and yes, I wouldn’t send pills yourself through the mail unless you know it’s legal. I’m wondering if he may need a medical diagnosis/appointment local…but I have to think these schools have had these questions before.
Good luck.
I think the university’s international student office is a good place to ask about meds in particular. The health plans for international students, if done via the university, are NHS and in some places it can take a while to get a psychiatrist appointment. I definitely would not send any prescription medicine through the mail.
For phone plans, some get temporary SIM cards while they are there and others find it’s ok to use roaming plans from home, especially if they are mostly on wifi (and you should be able to set your phone settings so as not to accidentally use tons of cellular data for downloads etc), so check what your provider here offers for international.
I can answer the phone plan question.
There are two options that come to mind:
- He can buy a local SIM. He’ll receive a UK number, which will be helpful to make local calls (and some schools/banks if he’s opening an account might even require this). The downside is that it’ll cost you to call him from the US, but you can use free calling with apps like WhatsApp. Phone and data plans are cheap outside the US.
- Your phone carrier likely has a plan that allows you to call any 1 country of your choice (outside NA) for free. Our carrier, Verizon, offers such a plan. The advantage is that he retains his US number so you and his friends here can call him for free and he can call back, plus he can call all UK numbers for free. But if he needs a UK number as mentioned above then this won’t help.
If he has a newer phone that supports dual SIMs he can do both of the above and have two numbers. This worked very well for my daughter (in another country, but it’ll be the same in the UK)
Edit: cross-posted with @SJ2727
My daughter’s abroad right now, and we dealt with these issues.
1.Phone plan - do you have Verizon, by any chance? If so, switch to the unlimited ultimate plan, which allows unlimited talk/text/data while abroad. You don’t have to make any other changes. If not, see if your carrier has something similar. My daughter has had no interruptions in her service, has not had to get a local SIM card, change her umber, etc. However, if you don’t have a workable phone plan, those solutions will wirk.
2.Meds: Call your insurance company and explain the situation. They can arrange for a suspension of the usual rules for refills so he can get what he needs before he goes. Either they can enter the exception into the system, or they can permit your son’s doctor to prescribe more than usual. In our case, we got a week’s grace period to get four months’ worth of meds, and when our pharmacy ran out of one of the prescriptions, we got the grace period extended so we could find a different pharmacy. It all worked out. Your son will have to hand-carry those meds (i.e., in carry-on bag, not a checked bag). But you should be fine.
Don’t try to find a provider to prescribe meds abroad – we were warned against that – although he might be able to find a mental health provider for therapy, etc. And you are correct that meds cannot be mailed.
We have Verizon, everyone has travel pass on their phones and just activate overseas, $10 a day is fine for a vacation but too much for a couple of months.
Agree with the others that the meds need to be sorted out before he leaves - you cannot mail them and it might be hard or take too long to figure out how to get once there. I think either the pharmacy or our insurance called it a vacation override even though it was for study abroad. For the phone, he should find out if the program recommends or requires a local number or not, and then you can look into using the international plan of your provider or adding a SIM card. The SIM card especially esim was much easier in practice than when trying to understand how it works. Good luck!
No, that’s the per-day plan (which has increased to $12/day now). Switch your son to the unlimited ultimate plan as @Shelby_Balik mentioned - it’s $5 more per month and unlimited calling/texting/data in any one country is included. Select the UK.
He only meets with his therapist through FaceTime once a month, so that’s fine. I think we might need to get involved with insurance, or even the university, for the prescription issues. I’ve actually talked to our prescription provider (Caremark) with the high cost of the 30 day prescription, they claim 90 is allowed for it, my son’s provider disagrees and says 30 is the max. Looks like some phone calls are needed.
Thanks for this information and the above Verizon information, calling today.
No answers to any of the above questions, but just want to wish your son an amazing experience! This is the one who got off to a rough start in school some years back, right? Very cool that he’s doing this.
You should be able to get an override from your insurance carrier for the meds for the whole semester but get working on that right away. For our insurance we need to use their mail order pharmacy so you need to allow enough time to get everything. Also make sure that your son has a copy of the script with him to prove that the meds are his.
Honestly, you might need to talk to a different provider who’s willing to work with you on the extended refill. What you’re describing is a difficult situation – the provider needs to know that he cannot get the meds in the UK, and he can’t have them shipped. He must leave the country with everything he’ll need. The school’s study abroad office might be able to help.
We didn’t have to select a country. Our plan is global. It was $1 more than the plan my daughter had before.
Yes and thanks, we just let him run with this (his best friend us going as well), and at one point were actually surprised he managed to put it all together and is actually going!
I think we will need to reach out to a few places regarding this, we’ve had zero interaction with his prescriber or university so far but will plan on some calls on Monday.
Good luck! I know it can be done! It just takes a little persistence, but it will be so worth it.
This is good.
One daughter did university (full four years) “slightly abroad” in Canada. She went to a doctor locally near where the university was and got a prescription for whatever medications she was taking. She did take some evidence that she already had the appropriate prescriptions here in the US.
You might want to make sure that the same medications are available in the UK. My understanding is that psychiatric medications can take some time and trial and error to get right, so it would seem like a very good idea to keep taking the exact same medications when taking a semester abroad.
However, for 90 days just getting the pills here in the US and carrying them with you might be easier (this would be less practical for four years of course).
By the way the prescriptions were less expensive in Canada, and probably will also be less expensive in the UK. A prescription from a local doctor was however necessary.
We did not ever mail any prescription medications. It is possible that some students studying abroad might bring some prescription medications back from Canada to the US just because the cost is so much lower in Canada (allegedly they generally let you bring back a 90 day supply, although obviously I would not have any direct knowledge of this).
The phone plan was not an issue since we can get a plan that works in the US and Canada. However, one of us also went abroad to Spain for approximately a semester, and also went abroad to somewhere in South America at a different point for a semester. In both cases she got a SIM card locally. I do not fully understand the details. I recall her mentioning when she was in Canada that while her plan allowed no additional charge roaming and calls throughout the US and Canada, her phone number was international for her friends. Thus her friends were charged for an international call if they called her. In some cases her friends therefore texted her when they wanted to call, and then my daughter called them.
And I agree that the university’s international student office should be familiar with these issues.
I agree! I am pretty sure that my daughter had a very positive experience studying abroad and expect that your son will too.
When DS studied abroad (not UK), the program required them to get a SIM card and local plan so they would all have local numbers. The school wanted to be able to contact everyone (from the US and elsewhere) easily. Asking the question of the program may dictate your solution.
The Verizon plans generally work well (but not always, ime) and have the advantage of switching networks when traveling, which most students do during their stints abroad.
When our kid did a study abroad for over three months, we needed more than a 90 day supply…his were necessary eyedrops…two of them.
Yes, the insurance company was the place to get this waiver for extended time. It’s not the first time they have dealt with students needing medication who will be gone for over three months.
Make that call asap Monday morning. Our company released the limit, and our doctor was able to call on a RX the same day for four months.
And YES hand carry on the plane.