Choosing insurance for family with small kids

[Polina]

I hope that more experienced cruisers can help me narrow down our choices. We are plannign to take a Carnival cruise to Baja Mexico in Jan 2011. Our kids are 5 and 3. In January it is a likely scenario that one of us will be sick, so we'd have to cancel. I think insurance with a pre-existing condition waiver is a must. If we have to cancel because one person is sick, are the costs for the entire trip reimbursed, or just for the sick person? The reality is that if one of us is down, the entire trip has to be cancelled :(

 

According to insuremytrip.com, Travelguard offers us secondary insurance for $66, and it has 15K medical, 100K evac per person. For $76 we can get primary insurance with Travelex, and it has 50K medical and 500K evac per person. Is it worth it?

 

Anything else I should pay attention to, as I read the fine print?

[cherylandtk]

Pay attention to what type of sickness is covered. This is from the Travelguard Gold policy: *Injury or Sickness of an Insured, Traveling Companion or Family Member traveling with the Insured must be so disabling as to reasonably cause a Trip to be cancelled or interrupted, or which results in medically imposed restrictions as certified by a Physician at the time of Loss preventing your continued participation in the Trip. A Physician must advise cancellation of the Trip on or before the Scheduled Departure Date

 

If your family illness does not meet that disabling definition, it would not be covered. It depends on what your doctor advises.

[Keith1010]

When it comes to preexisting many times the insurance must be purchased within two or three weeks from the time you first placed the deposit so be sure that you read the policy carefully. We primarily use Travelex.

 

The key is to read the fine print to ensure you understand what is and is not covered.

 

Keith

[sirwired]

With any policy, you need to read the whole thing before purchasing. Off-hand, that TravelEx policy sounds fine, but each company offers such a wide range of policies and exclusions, the fine print can be very important.

 

To obtain a pre-ex waiver, timing of the policy purchase vs. when you booked the cruise is very important, so make sure you pay attention to that.

 

SirWired

[sirwired]

... Ignore... posted in the wrong thread.

[Polina]

Pay attention to what type of sickness is covered. This is from the Travelguard Gold policy: *Injury or Sickness of an Insured, Traveling Companion or Family Member traveling with the Insured must be so disabling as to reasonably cause a Trip to be cancelled or interrupted, or which results in medically imposed restrictions as certified by a Physician at the time of Loss preventing your continued participation in the Trip. A Physician must advise cancellation of the Trip on or before the Scheduled Departure Date

 

If your family illness does not meet that disabling definition, it would not be covered. It depends on what your doctor advises.

 

What a great tip, thank you! Travelex says something similar but it is less restrictive in appearance, they do not use a term "disabling" and basically say that a doctor must indicate cancellation. That is reasonable. If we have a little cold, there is no reason to cancel anyway.

[Polina]

When it comes to preexisting many times the insurance must be purchased within two or three weeks from the time you first placed the deposit so be sure that you read the policy carefully. We primarily use Travelex.

 

The key is to read the fine print to ensure you understand what is and is not covered.

 

Keith

 

Thank you! I was wondering if we'd have to purchase at the point of deposit or final payment and now I'm clear we have to do it right away. Which is exactly why I'm trying to get an idea of what coverage we can get now, so that as soon as we book the cruise we can buy the insurance as well.