LtKernelPanic

I don't for domestic trips but I did for the three week trip I took to Europe this year. I think it cost me like $80. I most likely will for any future overseas trips.

boerne

what company did you use to get travel insurance for $80?

LtKernelPanic

I should have said it was just a basic plan I bought when I booked the trip through AA. They use Allianz as their provider. It offered like 15k in medical and 50k in emergency transport. Obviously if you have a catastrophic injury it would be inadequate but I figured if I tripped and fell while wandering around it'd be enough.

GeezerCouple

For more - and more detailed - discussions of travel insurance, you might also want to browse/follow or ask questions at the CruiseCritic subforum on travel insurance. Most of the issues that arise are not cruise-specific.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/foru...vel-insurance/

I also strongly recommend speaking with a travel insurance broker (no additional charge for the traveler, at least in the USA), someone who can speak about several policies from a variety of insurers. That way, one can find a policy that best matches your particular needs/concerns.

Issues to discuss include (but are not restricted to) whether you have pre-existing medical conditions; whether there are elderly/ill family members who are not traveling with you; whether there might be unexpected work issues that require you to cancel the trip; whether you want "cancel for any reason" (CFAR) coverage; and many other issues.

But MOST important is: Do you have adequate medical health insurance wherever you will be heading. Losing the trip costs are one thing, and that can in some cases be very costly. But a serious adverse medical event far from home, without insurance, can be catastrophic financially. (Some USA health insurers cover "out of country" events, some do not. Most Medicare coverage does *not* provide coverage for health care out of the USA, with very limited exceptions.)

We use www.TripInsuranceStore.com - they offer quite a few policies from several vetted insurers (meaning, in good part, that they *pay* their claims). They have coverage for residents of the USA, and some for Canadians.
There are other travel insurance brokers, of course.

Be careful about planning to use coverage from charge cards. Some of those are scaling back or discontinuing their insurance offerings.

One other thing: If one wants coverage for pre-existing conditions or CFAR, it is usually essential that one start the coverage within a week or three (depending upon policy) of the FIRST payment/deposit. The choices after that can be more costly or limited.
Again, this is regarding USA-based travel insurance. It can be very different elsewhere.

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boerne

brilliant

nancypants

Here in Australia every so often we are treated to a story of someone who has gone overseas (usually to Bali) and either doesn’t have insurance or has done something to invalidate the insurance they do have (usually either not declaring a pre existing condition or doing something monumentally stupid like riding a motorbike without a helmet or licence), and the general public is invited to contribute in the order of $250k to a go fund me to make up for the lack of insurance coverage

when I worked on Thursday Island we had a lady medivaced to us from Papua New Guinea who had been riding a motorbike without helmet or licence, with no insurance, and the family had literally scraped to get $25k together for the cheapest possible medivac to australian territory. TI is a great little place but it’s not exactly equipped to be dealing with traumatic brain injuries and spinal precautions (there isn’t even a CT scanner), but that was the best she could possibly have hoped for in the circumstances. It was then onto the Australian taxpayer to get her to a more appropriate centre

bottom line: take the insurance

trooper

I think you mean....."every week"! (Or maybe it just seems that way...)

nancypants

I was trying to be as vague as possible so as to not upset the pedants 😉

Bandicoot

As another poster above expressed, I feel I'm able to handle most minor inconveniences that come with travel disruption (needing to rebook flights or get a hotel room in a hurry, deal with airline voucher / reimbursement processes, etc.) and so I don't do anything "extra" to cover things like trip delays or cancellations beyond whatever my credit cards provide automatically in most cases. Non-serious medical care is also not a problem given my (US-based) health insurance has pretty good global coverage.Sure, I may be out a few bucks (and a few hours) now and then if some disruption happens, but it's not that big a deal and I'll take my chances with it.

But what terrifies me is the possibility of having a serious medical emergency in a foreign country. I would rather not spend days or weeks hospitalized in a place where I have language problems, the standard of care may be quite different, and access to funds to handle expenses may be hard, and if I'm perhaps in a situation where I can't make good decisions for myself and I'm away from family who could make those for me.

So I do make it a point to purchase medical evacuation coverage. For any serious medical mishap, I'd rather be transported back home to the US and deal with it there in a more familiar setting.

Never had to use it, but it gives me peace of mind for the possibility that I might need it.

GeezerCouple

Do you get something like MedJetAssist, where YOU would make the decision to be medevac'd even if the insurer or the local medical staff felt that your care at your current location is "medically appropriate"?

No need for beancounters to get involved in the decision, or for local medical staff to be put in the possibly awkward position of declaring themselves not quite up to it with your condition, etc.

That's a problem we don't want to deal with. MedJetAssist kicks in once you are admitted to a hospital as an inpatient (not ER or observation) at least 150 miles from home. As long as you are medically stable enough for transport including a fully staffed air ambulance, if *you* decide "take me to a hospital of my choice in my home country", they'll do it.

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Bandicoot

Yes.We're talking about dealing with severe illness or injury, and the last thing I'd want on top of the stress of being in a situation like that in a foreign country is having to argue with a beancounter somewhere about whether or not I could be evacuated home.

I do understand that medical facilities around the world where I might travel might be excellent and fully capable of dealing with anything, but, unless it was medically inadvisable for me to be moved at all, I think I'd prefer the peace of mind (mine and my family's) of being closer to home and family for any medical treatment and follow-up.

wco81

Just checked MedJetAssist. Pretty pricey.

There have been stories about Amex evacuating their Platinum card holders for well into 6-figures.

But yeah, I wondered about medical evacuation coverage, whether they would repatriate you or say just evacuate you from say a developing country to the nearest industrialized country. So maybe they'd only move you from somewhere in Africa to Europe rather than back to the US?

That is if you can get them to agree that you need to be medically evacuated to another continent in the first place? Maybe they would just evacuate you to South Africa or Nigeria or something.

But MedJetAssist is pretty costly. You can get a short-term policy for about $150 for 2 weeks. But a travel insurance with medical evacuation benefit of $250k is about $40-50.

So I wonder if MedJetAssist is worth $100 more, just to be able to say "fly me back to the US, skip anywhere in Africa and Europe, fly me back home."

wco81

I had a medical emergency a couple of years in Spain.

I hadn't studied my insurance too much but it did have coverage for emergencies while abroad. It still cost me about $6000 out of pocket though it went to my deductible that year and towards the end of the year, I did a lot of things which I otherwise might not have done.

I had to go through some lengthy appeal process because initially they tried to reject it. I also made a claim against Chase Sapphire Reserve but turned out my flight was booked with another card, even though most of the other expenses were charged to to CSR. That is what triggers their coverage, that you used their card with the common carrier.

So I've purchased some short-term travel insurance, which typically are cheap, like $40-50 and offers secondary medical coverage. But there are also some which offer primary medical in that price range too.

And some offer some dental coverage of a couple hundred.

And some offer some limited coverage for baggage and personal property. So I would imagine if your luggage is lost or damaged, you settle with the airlines and then if your belongings cost more than what the airlines paid for, then you would use these policies, which are limited typically to $500 max per item and up to $500-1500 total.

freecia

That is their selling point. Fly me back to a home hospital. MedJet has a AARP discount for the yearly plans.

There's also trip insurance for in-field medical evacuation, rescue, and hostile situation extraction. Ripcord Rescue will evacuate from the field vs as an inpatient. Useful if you're going to places which barely have a clinic.

I've looked about for travel insurance which offers a small rider for personal electronics and policies which cover rental car liability, too. Many travel insurance "baggage" excludes personal electronics like mobile phone, laptop, camera (and if the policy has been updated at all, tablets etc). I've scaled back on my travel electronics but a new flagship smartphone can easily be $1,000, noise cancelling headphones $250+. If I'm buying travel insurance instead of just medical travel and evacuation, I do take a quick look to see if gadgets would be covered if accidentally lost or stolen. My credit card only covers that for a few months after initial purchase. I can and usually do self-insure. It just hurts to buy something nice twice because I'm much more likely to be at fault than a pickpocket or thief (as it should, to remind me of my own stupidity, but insurance forms are also penance, right?). I would definitely look into this more for media heavy trips like safari or expedition cruise.

Rental car personal and third party liability works differently in various countries and my CC's primary coverage does not cover injuries to others and their property, personal liability (not in collision with others). It can take a while to read and understand what insurance is included with car rentals, potential excess costs, and what a rental car agency's additional insurance offers vs third party options but this is another prudent cost to cover. Especially if you can be liable for the other party's medical bills and/or sued.

GeezerCouple

We get the MJA annual policy, with the AARP (is that it?) discount.

That way, we are covered for our "major travel" a few times a year (usually 2 or 3 trips, of about 2 to 4 weeks each) plus all of the "little trips", such as business travel within the USA, or visits to friends/family or even weekend getaways, which would be covered as long as they are at least 150 miles from home. Being across the country might not lead to seriously deficient hospital care, but we'd still rather be back with "our" hospital and physicians, who are familiar with our specific medical situations (we each have some tricky issues).
And of course, it would be so much easier to be able to be "at home" rather than at a hotel while the other is in hospital.

The bottom line, to us anyway, is that it is indeed "worth it" (and especially at the annual rate) to know that we would be able to say, "Fly me to 'my' hospital please!"

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