The bottom line is surely that you get what you pay for. As I have said previously Amex Platinum Charge Card insurance has, for me at least, been outstanding. Volcanoes, snow, baggage, illness. I have claimed many times in the last 10 years all settled without a quibble.
Now not everyone can afford £450 a year but for a family of 4 it does represent good solid value in my view.
The other issue is read the policy documents. I personally have never seen the exclusion “act of god” but I wouldnt touch a policy that has this as it opens up to many avenues to argue a claim.
The other issue is that there are too many spurious claims for food poisoning and many fraudulent claims. This in turn leads to more complex policies and a greater tendency to argue the claim.
finally there really must be changes to how airlines are held to account when they do not fulfill their obligations under EU261. The sight of people sleeping in terminals, in one case the woman had stage 4 cancer, is a disgrace. In mass disruption events the automatic payment of money should be made mandatory, this could be via a pre loaded visa/MasterCard. Where carriers cannot provide a room locally the card could be preloaded with £350 or more per passenger to allow them to make their own arrangements. These would be issued at the checkin desk. It would provide carriers with an incentive to make arrangements for their customers and end the complaints from passengers that nothing was being done.