offerendum

SanDiego1K

I look forward to reading more thoughts about this. I'd love to hear from Americans who have found affordable annual travel insurance policies. I understand that Europeans almost automatically get policies thru their bank that are not available to us living in the US. I've researched travel insurance several times and find it tied to individual trips and quite expensive. We travel frequently and I'd love to find an annual policy.

For several years we have paid for MedJet evacuation insurance. This is an annual policy that I tend to buy for three years at a time. It gives me some comfort to know that we can be brought back home should we need extended care. And I continue to rely on Chase Sapphire insurance that comes with charging the travel components to it. How well that will work with parts of trips paid with points interlaced with paid travel I have no idea. We have never had to absorb more than a few hundred dollars from trip disruption but I do feel as this is an area where I have a little gray cloud over my head.

offerendum

Points btw..... Mostly reservations on Points are cancelable at short notice. If not I guess no insurance will help you

Kagehitokiri

any insurance refund nights if one arrives late ?

my risk tolerance includes risk of expensive insurance not paying out, especially when its a standardized offering with lengthy fine print and exclusions.

RichardInSF

I have never purchased travel insurance and I have had an unexpected health emergency that was not a pre-existing condition. That trip was mostly charged on my Amex plat and I didn't remember that coverage so approached all the suppliers directly. Most made an exception although some required a doctor's letter and the non-refundable portions totaled about $600 or so, mainly because one lodging supplier refused any refund (Landmark Trust, a British charity).

That was way cheaper than had I been buying travel insurance all along. I hear that the commission on many of those policies can routinely go as high as 35%, which tells me all I need to know.

I have however noticed that luxury and high-end city hotels have been hiking up their cancellation times to as much as 72 hours in the last year, which is frustrating.

So I'm a strong NO on this insurance, but then I am willing to make the effort required to ask these companies to waive their restrictions if something bad happens and have so far mostly succeeded with that.

DavidO

Very interesting and important topic. Here's my thinking:

RichardInSF

David, many of the standardized medigap insurance plans (including F, the most common type) automatically include coverage when outside the USA. So most people with Medicare may already have what they need.

And you don't need the credit card auto collision coverage to be primary outside the USA as virtually no US auto policy covers outside the country. You also don't need it if you don't have collision coverage, which is often done with older non-collectible cars.

Gig103

My Citi card provides $5000/traveler, but now that I book premium airfare, that no longer covers my whole trip, so I'm sort of in the same situation.

The only time I booked trip insurance was back in 2014 when I had a trip planned around the time of my cancer diagnosis. I was able to qualify for a pre-existing waiver and my travel was after my expected recovery, but of course if things didn't go according to plan I didn't want to miss out. (3.5 years cancer free now, went on the trip, had a great time).

behuman

Insurance companies make big money selling "travel insurances" which will need a lawyer to get some money considering all the exclusions.

I think a comprehensive worldwide health /accident insurance is the only thing you need if:

• you book only flights which are changeable / refundable,
• choose hotels / resorts according to their cancellation policies and are willing to bear that risk,
• have a credit card covering you for car hire damage excess fees and
• are a reasonably experienced traveler who is multilingual and able to sort out things yourself.

Hence for sure no travel insurance for me, but wise risk management. I not like the idea that everything can be "insured".

Ericka

Evacuation - we have a DAN (yes, scuba diving) family membership

Cancellation
Big Expensive Trips - we buy a travelex policy
Little Trips - we have adequate coverage with our UA Mileage Plus credit card

Note, many of our trips use airline miles which can be redeposited without penalty.

Ericka

RolfD

luxtrvlwrks

To be clear, so that anyone on Medicare that may read this has the facts from Medicare.gov:

To reiterate my earlier point, having coverage is only part of the equation. You also have to have the ability to pay upfront first (and float that balance until you receive your benefits). Furthermore, a $50,000 lifetime maximum isn't much coverage and paying 80% isn't great either.

It's a good idea to look at all of the coverage that you have available to compare with any potential travel-specific plans of interest, and weigh that against your risk tolerance.

dulciusexasperis

There are a couple of general factors you leave out that matter.

1. What do you mean by 'travel insurance'? Generally speaking, what people refer to as travel insurance falls into 2 categories. Medical insurance and trip insurance. Some people are talking about both when they use the term 'travel insurance' but many are talking about only one or the other. Medical insurance should be a must for anyone who understands that even you can get hit by a bus and that can result in huge medical bills. Trip insurance can be ignored IF you are willing to risk the potential costs you won't have covered. A hotel cancellation, a flight cancellation, a lost bag, etc.

2. Attitudes to insurance differ by nationality in many cases. In a country where you are used to having to pay for things out of your own pocket, you find more people willing to go without insurance. In a country where medical coverage is universally provided, few people would be happy with the idea of having to pay out of their own pocket if something happened to them.

3. Self-insuring (whether you think of it that way or not) and your ability to do so is the only other option. If you don't buy insurance then that is what you are doing, again, whether you think of it that way or not. Generally speaking, you should be able to come up with a number as a percentage of your income that you are willing to lose. Anything that will cost you more than that, you should be insuring for. So for example if you had to lose the cost of all flights and hotels and that came to 1% of your annual income, you might feel comfortable enough self-insuring. If it totaled 10% of your annual income however, you might not. Then you should insure.

This point of calculating what you are happy with self-insuring, never applies to medical coverage however as you cannot calculate how much that might be. Hotel, flights, a lost camera, etc. are all costs you can know beforehand. Medical is not. You can also find plenty of horror stories online of people who even bought some kind of travel insurance and thought they were covered for something, only to find out they were not. So reading and understanding your whole policy is a must.

One simple example of what may or may not be covered is when a woman travels while pregnant. If she has a premature birth, she may find for example that her hospital costs for the birth are covered but the costs of any care given to the baby are not! The baby is not insured and what's more you can't buy insurance for the baby before it is born. Lesson, don't travel when pregnant.
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MikeFromTokyo