Travel Insurance ?

[Daveman34286]

Do you use it ? And what company do you use ?

[cahhhoo]

We do not buy it. If we use our Chase credit card to pay for the trip, it comes with trip insurance (if you get sick, death in family, and such, in that you miss the trip). For medical, my wife's health insurance covers us overseas. We just need to keep the receipts and submit when we get home. Includes med-flight too.

I would check into those options.

[The Travel Slut]

I use and recommend Travel-ex for out-of-country travel.

[earthangel496]

https://www.squaremouth.com/ reviews over 100 vendors, we usually purchase from CSA

[Goldorak]

I never travel without travel insurance. I use Europ Assistance. I've had to use them twice and each time, i was extremely impressed by them. They made a difficult situation much easier.

[phillygirl22]

The plans can cover a lot of different things, so check what you may already have, what your real concerns are, and then check out what's available. One year I took out a policy because I was afraid my client would suddenly need me to work and ruin my Hedo New Year trip. It was a slightly more expensive for a policy that covered this, but at that point in the project, worth my peace of mind. I also took out a full bells and whistles policy for my 3 week trip to South Africa- I wasn't messing around there! Lol

[chazo4]

We've used TravelGuard Gold for years. We never travel outside the US without it. While some credit cards have travel insurance, the policies are usually very minimal and often have lots of exclusions. Frankly, I have never been concerned about losing the value of a trip. What concerns me is getting sick or injured on a trip. Foreign medical costs and evacuation can be massively expensive. One side benefit of travel insurance is that, since we started buying it about ten years ago, we've never had a claim. Before that we have lots of trips that had problems. Interesting how when you are prepared you don't end up needing it. We're off to Hedo in a couple weeks and I'm glad to have it during the absolutely peak of the hurricane season, since anything could happen that time of the year.

Two rules you should always abide by when buying travel insurance:

1) NEVER buy from the travel provider. The plans offered by online travel agents or cruise lines tend to be the worst possible deals and the reputation of those vendors are terrible. Expedia will sell you travel insurance, but it's absolute crap.

2) NEVER NEVER NEVER buy a plan that does not include a pre-existing condition waiver! I can't stress this enough. You had a heart attack? I think your heart was pre-existing, right? Travel forums are littered with stories of people denied coverage of the most trivial of pre-existing condition issue. All good plans offer this waiver if you buy within some number of days of the first trip deposit and then you don't have to worry about it. If you buy a plan without it, I guarantee you they will find something that was pre-existing and deny due to it.

Also, there is travel "insurance" and travel "protection". Be absolutely certain you are buying travel "insurance". As soon as they add that word, they are subject to regulations. Omit that word and they can do whatever they want. Note that some companies refer to travel protection, but the policy is actually insurance, but be sure.

[phillygirl22]

http://www.elliott.org/frequently-as...avel-insurance

[foxxyandhound]

we buy it by the year.... from RBC. it covers us on all our trips have never used it but its there if we needs it...

[CapnMorgan]

we buy it by the year.... from RBC. it covers us on all our trips have never used it but its there if we needs it...

We have the same with TD. $200 Cdn a year per person. Fortunately we also have never had to use it.

[foxxyandhound]

yep about the same price at RBC...

[we2are469]

Foreign medical costs and evacuation can be massively expensive. One side benefit of travel insurance is that, since we started buying it about ten years ago, we've never had a claim. Before that we have lots of trips that had problems. Interesting how when you are prepared you don't end up needing it.

Two rules you should always abide by when buying travel insurance:

1) NEVER buy from the travel provider. The plans offered by online travel agents or cruise lines tend to be the worst possible deals and the reputation of those vendors are terrible. Expedia will sell you travel insurance, but it's absolute crap.

2) NEVER NEVER NEVER buy a plan that does not include a pre-existing condition waiver!

.

All good advice. Pillygirl's link also has much good information.
We buy an annual travel medical plan, and this year made our first claim when we had a medical emergancy and had to cancel our H2 trip 6 days before departure. We got 100% refund. Normally we didn't worry too much about the cost of the trip, and expected to take a hit if we couldn't make it, but this was an added feature on our new medical coverage, and it paid off. Do note that age also plays a part in your coverage/premimun, which is why we switched from our BMO credit card medical/travel insurance to a different company, that and the fact that BMO extended the exclusion period to 1 year. The new company has an exclusion period of 3 months.
I would NEVER leave Canada, without a medical coverage plan.
The Caribbean has a new "Tourist" medical clinic franchise that is spreading fast, and the sole purpose is to milk tourists for their medical needs. Most tourists have travel medical insurance, and the clinics can charge really high prices, knowing that the insurance will pay up. That being said, H2 no longer has a nurses station, and medical emergancies are now farmed out to, yeah, you guessed it, a franchised medical clinic.
Ray