Originally Posted by theaelizabeth

When I boarded a Holland America cruise ship with my 92 year old father in the early 90s in Rome bound for a premiere itinerary in the Mediterranean, neither of us had an Amex Platinum card; I did have an Amex Gold card but my father, being frugal, just had his Sears card! To make a very long story short, the cruise line put us off in the port of Naples and a car loosely termed an ambulance (with no medical equipment) took us to a hospital, which we discovered quickly was a birthing hospital. My father was the only male there.

When still on the ship (this was my father's 18th cruise with that liner), they asked me to pay for the care he had over the course of a few hours, which consisted of monitoring his heart ... he had the beginnings of a heart attack, but only just the beginnings. Holland America charged me $800 and I handed a nurse my Gold Card. After the charge was processed, I got a call from Global Assist asking me, as a 20-year holder of the card, what was wrong. I was amazed. I explained and they said they would alert their medical representative (a doctor) in Milan who would check on my father at the hospital, talking to the Italian doctors. For the next three days the Milan doctor monitored his care remotely by phone twice a day, recommending on the last day that we transfer him to a facility he had chosen. He would order the transfer by medical ambulance.

At this hospital, there was no cardiac unit, nor was he hooked up to any machine except for a creaky EKG. By then the doctors at the hospital who spoke no English told the secretary-translator he could go back to the US, so my father rejected the offer to transport him to a hospital that could treat him. He died the next morning before we could consider the transport again. Global Assist continued to call even after his death.

Global Assist even wrote a letter that stated that the hospital had no appropriate cardio facilities available to treat him in case I filed a lawsuit; they were extraordinarily helpful in the most stressful of situations, for the the cardholder (myself) and my father who was not covered under my card.