A healthcare insurance provider that once served a narrow slice of the federal employee community has steadily widened its aperture. Now, the American Foreign Service Protective Association serves those not only in the State Department, but also people in the Homeland Security Department and Intelligence Community.

“Our focus is on those who are serving overseas, for foreign affairs, or for intelligence gathering or national defense, or those who are supporting them stateside,” said Kyle Longton, CEO of AFSPA. “We’re not just for the Foreign Service anymore.”

Still, the themes of working abroad with the potential for being kinetically involved unites users of AFSPA’s health care insurance options. A basic attraction, Longton said, derives from the carrier’s extensive overseas network of providers, something few other federal health insurance options offer.

“We also will treat whatever the provider bills overseas as the plan allowance,” Longton said during Federal News Network’s 2025 Open Season Exchange. “We’re not going to reduce it to a stateside fee schedule. That’s particularly helpful to our members if they’re in high-cost areas, which does happen in some places overseas.”

For the same reason, given that two-thirds of its members live in the United States, AFSPA plans come with access to Aetna’s extensive network and with eligibility for 70% of costs when customers go out of that network.

Not everyone stationed overseas works in nations with fully modern medical care systems. Many work in what State dubs “medically austere” environments, Longton said.

For these feds, AFSPA offers telehealth services through its V-Health Overseas, “both for general medical consultations as well as for mental health,” he said. AFSPA makes stateside second opinions available to its members. For services rendered overseas, AFSPA has direct billing arrangements with providers in countries from Colombia to China.

“We’ve got wellness programs that are accessible, as well as support for chronic care management,” Longton said. Those will also become available to overseas members next year, he said.

IVF and other services

When the Office of Personnel Management in 2023 “cracked open the door to cover more services related to infertility we pushed it open,” Longton said. That consisted of covering more than the basic requirements. In 2024, AFSPA covered the prescription drug side and the advanced reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization.

In 2025, Longton said, AFSPA will expand and ease members’ access to services such as intrauterine insemination.

He listed other services that make AFSPA a comprehensive choice too, including life insurance, four dental plans (one for overseas), vision programs and hearing aid discount plans.

Moreover, the carrier offers features such as professional services partnerships with experts in long term care insurance, Longton said. “We also have legal consultations and financial planning, including a [financial] wellness platform that we offer through our partnership with Prudential — free of charge.”

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