Does TSCC carry health insurance for its missionaries? What kind?

Who pays if a missionary needs to be hospitalized? Who pays if the missionary is in a foreign area and needs to go home temporarily to receive medical treatment (like, say, surgery)? Would a parent's health insurance usually cover a missionary (after all, they are not students)?

LDS INC is self insured for missionaries, & speaking from experience they will forward the bills to anyone they can that they think will shoulder the cost to avoid having to pay them.

If you want to see a mad scramble, then get hurt as a missionary & end up in the hospital so LDS Inc gets billed.
You will find out very quickly just exactly how LDS Inc does not give about damn about your health & well being.
Letting Your parents use the local chapel for a funeral & seeing you buried is cheaper than a hospital stay, plus there is the great faith building tragedy & death of missionary PR to capitalize on & LDS INC damn well prefers it! Its a pretty shocking lesson to learn when you are doing so much for them
and they dont want to do anything for you when you are in need.

Missionaries typically use parents insurance. They are treated as students and still insured by their parents. If they don't have insurance, then the mission will cover them, but that's probably 5% of missionaries.

In my mission, we had to pay for our own prescriptions. I about went broke one month because I got bronchitis. Since the French had full insurance coverage, they didn't worry about the costs of prescriptions.

I later found out that the mission was supposed to pay for prescriptions if we didn't have drug coverage. Our mission prez was just trying to save money to show how fiscally responsible he was, and it wasn't the first time he tried to balance the mission budget on our backs. I tried to get reimbursed but they said I "had waited too long", even though I was told at the time that I had to pay for them.

Considering I had about $100/month to pay for food and everything other than rent, the prescription costs took me months to recover from.

And just try to get anything for care for conditions contracted on your mission. They really don't want to hear about that. And if it's for depression, you might as well give up before you start.

Most insurance companies prior to healthcare reform would NOT pay for missionary healthcare because they are NOT full-time students. The church will pay if they get sick on their missions, but if they are sent home with serious health conditions, and some of the ones who come home "sick" actually are, the bill after that is on the backs of the parents, the church washes their hands of it.

I know a couple who have twins on a mission right now. They are die-hard Glenn Beckaholics and I know they hate to admit that healthcare reform is going to do anything for them, but they are so relieved that they will be able to put their missionary sons back on their insurance. I know of a single mom who is in dire financial condition because of the medical bills she has from when her son came home and needed surgery. She said she could have paid for his entire 4-year college education without financial aid and still have come out better than sending him on a mission, paying for over a year's worth of a mission and then to end up the way she is. She has good health insurance and had him covered when he was a student.

So it will be interesting how many mormons are going to jump on the repeal healthcare bandwagon when they now are able to have their missionaries covered. My guess is that Orin Hatch will push to keep that part of it.