Yes.
To be honest this is the first time I have looked at the super visa and medical insurance option. The insurance plan is not sufficient to cover the health care costs of an elderly person living in Canada. $100,000 coverage is too little.
I'll go ask around whether they have more comprehensive packages. I'd rather pay a $100,000 in insurance premiums and make sure everything is covered for their entire lives than to play around with possible charges that can go into the millions. Mind you, most physicians don;t even know how to bill foreign patients. What is considered a reasonable fee? I am not aware of any guidelines.
I do have a friend whose father visited them in Edmonton and they did not buy travel insurance. He had an AMI. The bills went into excess of $500,000 before they finally got him fit enough to fly back to his home country.
So even with the travel insurance I am guessing the coverage would only have been $100,000?
It's really tough.
Every doctor/hospital has their own policies. All places should have rates and billing practices for those not covered under a provincial plan (either for foreign visitors, or Canadians during wait period for provincial coverage).
Some places will work with you to bill your insurance company directly, but most will probably demand an upfront payment and tell you to make the claim to insurance yourself. Some hospital emergency rooms will make you pay an upfront deposit before they even look at you, but if parent needs to stay in hospital long term they may make arrangement to start directly dealing with the insurer.
When choosing an insurer, make sure you understand and disclose all the parent's pre-existing conditions and medications they are on. Stable conditions may be covered, and others maybe not. Some insurers will just accept whatever you say on the initial application, but will really start investigating when a claim is actually made to see if there was some mistake or omission on the original application that would void the policy and allow them to deny you payment.
Also make sure you understand the term of the policy, if the rates are guaranteed, when the insurer would be allowed to increase rates (i.e. yearly renewals or is price locked in for X years), etc etc. If a claim is made, does that cause the next renewal to skyrocket the price? Or at certain ages can the insurer increase the price significantly? The older someone gets the more chance there is of medical claims being made, so I imagine at some age the cost of insurance would be astronomical.