Obtaining health insurance AFTER injury? -

My brother is an international student in Halifax (NS, Canada). He graduated from his English course last week and so his health insurance expired then and there. He had three weeks till he goes back home to his country, however he got himself badly injured and had to undergo surgery for a broken cheekbone. The medical bill will be around $3000 and he has no health insurance to help him out. We're not sure how to appraoch this - $3000 is too much and we're thinking: Is it possible to obtain temporary health insurance for him now to help us pay for his surgery??? Any information would be much appreciated. Thanks. Companies require up to a 12-month waiting period on pre-existing conditions. And there's no way you could get a company to pay for surgery that has already happened. Check with the previous insurer and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; there may be some COBRA coverage that could kick in. That's not how insurance works. You purchase and pay insurance premiums because of the risk of future events. Not to cover things that already happened. What you're asking is like trying to purchase homeowners insurance after your house has burned down. Sorry. He'll have to investigate other methods of financing his medical care. That would be the same as me taking out a life insurance policy on my husband a week after he dies. You can't get coverage after the fact. Sorry Nope. It's already happened. He's going to have to enter into a payment plan to repay this, even if it takes him a year or so. All in all, $3,000 is CHEAP for surgery. It's way less than a car. It shouldn't take him long to pay it back. At his age, there is no insurance policy that is going to pay for a surgery needed before the policy was taken out. His best bet is to talk to those he does/will owe money to and see what kind of options they can offer him. Good luck.