I am sold on travel insurance now.

[TriciaEMTB]

Today we transported a little girl from a hospital to an executive airport for a fixed wing medical flight to Canada.

 

Her family had come down to spend a few days at Disney and then take a cruise. After the first night there she had gotten sick, and they had been in the hospital since January! :eek:

 

Came home and bought travel insurance right away, kind of figured it was a sign not to travel uninsured.

 

When did you realize that you should get travel insurance? Or haven't you had that moment yet? :D

 

What company do you use?

 

Anyone ever have to use the medical portion of travel insurance?

 

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

[MsSoCalCruiser]

Today we transported a little girl from a hospital to an executive airport for a fixed wing medical flight to Canada.

 

Her family had come down to spend a few days at Disney and then take a cruise. After the first night there she had gotten sick, and they had been in the hospital since January! :eek:

 

Came home and bought travel insurance right away, kind of figured it was a sign not to travel uninsured.

 

When did you realize that you should get travel insurance? Or haven't you had that moment yet? :D

 

What company do you use?

 

Anyone ever have to use the medical portion of travel insurance?

 

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

 

Tricia, I always buy travel insurance from Carnival when I book my cruise but I have never had to use it. I bought insurance for my Splendor cruise (Halloween). I came really close to using the insurance. Two weeks after my cruise ended, I had a heart attack and had to have surgery. I am so lucky that this didn't happen out at sea. I really have no idea what the insurance would have covered.

[TriciaEMTB]

Oh wow! I hope you're recovering nicely!

[CanWeGoYet?]

I've used it once, for my son. I always make sure we have pre-existing condition covered, as with both of us having asthma the odds are fair if we run into a health crisis on board the asthma could be involved.

 

He caught a respiratory infection & his asthma was getting worse. I took him to the medical bay & made sure we went before he started looking bad. I know there can be a very low threshold for what they feel is too sick to be treated on board. He only needed 1 visit, got a nebulizer treatment, z-pack and prednisone. Good to go. It wasn't a hugely expensive event but I broke even on buying the travel insurance and had the peace of mind knowing if worse came to worst, we'd be covered.

[MsSoCalCruiser]

Oh wow! I hope you're recovering nicely!

 

Thank you! I'm fine! It was a shock though. I'm small and not that old. Never expected something like this to happen to me. It just shows how much we all need the insurance. Thinking about it makes me want to start a thread on women and heart attacks. I had no idea that I was having a heart attack. Women have different symptoms than men.

[TriciaEMTB]

Thank you! I'm fine! It was a shock though. I'm small and not that old. Never expected something like this to happen to me. It just shows how much we all need the insurance. Thinking about it makes me want to start a thread on women and heart attacks. I had no idea that I was having a heart attack. Women have different symptoms than men.

 

Yup! Women are infamous for abdominal pain/nausea heart attacks as well as "silent" completely asymptomatic heart attacks.

 

Also a person's "small"ness is not an indicator for cardiovascular health. You can be skinny and still have fatty organs and CAD, high cholesterol etc.

 

 

 

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[treasure4two]

I always take the travel insurance. To me, one of the most important parts is the insurance is the part that covers emergency evacuation. We are going on a safari to South Africa this summer and if something happens out there, it will cost a fortune to fly us out, but I have one million dollars coverage for exactly that. I think on the cruise, the coverage is $100,000-250,000. I have used my travel insurance when my luggage was delayed 4 days in Europe and then items in one of the bags was missing when I received it plus my luggage was damaged. I recouped more from those things than what I have paid on insurance than the last

6 cruises we took.

My advice is always take travel insurance.

[Tapi]

We buy our insurance through the Insure My Trip website. We've used different policies depending on what out needs were at the time (For example, we used Travel Guard Gold one time because it has a very generous "Cancel For Work Reasons" clause, which we ended up using). Last October we used Frontier Medex Choice Outbound because it was one of the few that covered "Medical Complications due to Pregnancy" (my wife was 20 weeks pregnant at the time. We didnt use the insurance this time :)). Last year we canceled our Alaska cruise because my father had major emergency surgery (we canceled outside of penalty, so we didn't need to use insurance then).

 

I'm a big advocate of travel insurance. Even if we are young and healthy, a lot of things can still happen that are beyond our control...

[fishtaco]

I have never travelled without travel insurance,never needed to use it but its a small price to pay in case you do.

 

Den

[kingoftheicedragons]

As far as medical coverage goes, I'm fortunate that I don't need travel insurance for that aspect. My medical coverage that I get through work covers me whereever I am in the world, and it also covers air evacuation for emergencies. If I was sailing in the Caribbean, it would fly me to Jacksonville, Florida, which would be the closest in-network facility to the Caribbean.

 

I did get travel insurance for our recent cruise out of Puerto Rico to cover the trip in case the weather delayed me in getting to Puerto Rico.

[sparks1093]

When I found out how expensive medevac's are I realized that was a gamble that I didn't want to take, what with having a heart attack 6 years ago at the age of 47 and with DW's medical problems. A package plan isn't really that expensive so I always make sure to budget it now.

[russianmom]

I always buy it thru insure my trip .com as well.

My son has a variety of complex medical issues (including a pacemaker). There is no way I would travel without it.

 

This is also a good argument for having a passport- if you had to be disembarked at a foreign port of call for treatment and then needed to get home from there......

[vacruizer]

Thank you! I'm fine! It was a shock though. I'm small and not that old. Never expected something like this to happen to me. It just shows how much we all need the insurance. Thinking about it makes me want to start a thread on women and heart attacks. I had no idea that I was having a heart attack. Women have different symptoms than men.

 

Glad you are bettter! You are so right about women and heart attacks - my MIL thought she had the stomach flu. She had gastro symptoms but no chest or arm pain. Thought the weakness was just part of having the stomach flu and being dehydrated. Four days in, she finally went to the ER thinking she just needed some fluids. Turns out she'd been having a heart attack.

[Herfnerd]

Always buy Travel Guard - never gone thru Carnival.

[Smithkids5521]

Always buy Travel Guard - never gone thru Carnival.

 

Same here...Travel guard. :)

[divngmedic]

Today we transported a little girl from a hospital to an executive airport for a fixed wing medical flight to Canada.

 

Her family had come down to spend a few days at Disney and then take a cruise. After the first night there she had gotten sick, and they had been in the hospital since January! :eek:

 

Came home and bought travel insurance right away, kind of figured it was a sign not to travel uninsured.

 

When did you realize that you should get travel insurance? Or haven't you had that moment yet? :D

 

What company do you use?

 

Anyone ever have to use the medical portion of travel insurance?

 

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

I wonder if they carry clot busting drugs. Would suck to be having a STEMI and then having to wait hours to get off the ship.

[geoherb]

I've purchased travel insurance for all of our cruises we've taken over the past dozen years or so. We buy it primarily in case something happens to one of our parents. Fortunately we haven't had to cancel a cruise.

 

My mother and stepfather got to reschedule their Alaskan cruise when he had heart surgery. If they had not had insurance, I doubt they could have gone the following year. And my mother-in-law missed most of her Mediterranean cruise after being taken off the ship in Greece. The insurance company was wonderful to deal with--taking care of her hospital bill, my father-in-law's hotel, the changes in their flights when she was well enough to travel, and even sent along a student nurse to accompany her on those flights.

 

Our only claim did not even cover the cost of the insurance--getting reimbursed for seeing the doctor for a sinus infection on a Princess cruise. But it was nice to get that money back.

[divngmedic]

Glad you are bettter! You are so right about women and heart attacks - my MIL thought she had the stomach flu. She had gastro symptoms but no chest or arm pain. Thought the weakness was just part of having the stomach flu and being dehydrated. Four days in, she finally went to the ER thinking she just needed some fluids. Turns out she'd been having a heart attack.

That is why I do 12 lead ECG's on women over 40 with flu like symptoms when no one else in the house has them or had them in the last few days. I have caught several women having heart attacks that way.

[gtalum]

Personally I never leave the US without travel insurance. Health insurance coverage outside of the country is very spotty, and travel insurance is so cheap that it seems counterproductive not to purchase it. For those who travel a lot you can buy annual travel insurance policies instead of a new policy for each trip.

 

I buy primarily for the medical and medical evacuation coverage. The trip cancellation benefit is just gravy.

[donaldsc]

I buy medical and evacuation insurance as this is where the major costs to me can be. IMHO, anything else is just a waste of money and a big money maker for the insurance company. I figure that in the worse case, I can afford the loss of the trip expenses if I have to cancel before I leave. I can't afford the costs that would occur during the trip if problems occur.

 

Before you make a decision re insurance, you need to decide what your personal loss threshold is either financially or emotionally.

 

DON

[hermitstyle]

As far as medical coverage goes, I'm fortunate that I don't need travel insurance for that aspect. My medical coverage that I get through work covers me whereever I am in the world, and it also covers air evacuation for emergencies. If I was sailing in the Caribbean, it would fly me to Jacksonville, Florida, which would be the closest in-network facility to the Caribbean.

 

I did get travel insurance for our recent cruise out of Puerto Rico to cover the trip in case the weather delayed me in getting to Puerto Rico.

Mayo insurance? My mom works for Mayo, called the insurance company Mayo uses to find out exactly what would be covered and if she would still need travel insurance, and she still had to get travel insurance. I would double check. Don't know all the details since she works for Mayo, not me. I do know that she was not worried about the medical evac because of that exact reason of the flight to the closest Mayo facility.

[gtalum]

I buy medical and evacuation insurance as this is where the major costs to me can be. IMHO, anything else is just a waste of money and a big money maker for the insurance company. I figure that in the worse case, I can afford the loss of the trip expenses if I have to cancel before I leave. I can't afford the costs that would occur during the trip if problems occur.

 

Before you make a decision re insurance, you need to decide what your personal loss threshold is either financially or emotionally.

 

DON

 

FWIW, I usually find that the cost of comprehensive travel insurance (including trip cancellation, delay, etc) is only marginally more expensive if at all more expensive than medical and evacuation coverage alone. Likely this is because you are correct, the real risk lies in medical and evacuation costs, which can easily become exorbitant.

[suzski]

I always get insurance when I'm travelling out of the country but don't always get it for local trips as my husband and I are active duty military so our medical is covered. However, as we transition out, we will ALWAYS get insurance.

 

On a side but related not, we purchased insurance for a trip for our moms that we gave them for Christmas....a 7 night cruise in the Med.....on the Costa Concordia:eek:. They were to embark on the 14th and were in Italy when everything went 'to schettino' (pardon my Italian). They spent an additional two nights in Italy waiting for their return flight and I am SO thankful they had the insurance! We bought it never imagining they would need it for this, but are so thankful that we purchased it, nevertheless!

[sparks1093]

I always get insurance when I'm travelling out of the country but don't always get it for local trips as my husband and I are active duty military so our medical is covered. However, as we transition out, we will ALWAYS get insurance.

 

On a side but related not, we purchased insurance for a trip for our moms that we gave them for Christmas....a 7 night cruise in the Med.....on the Costa Concordia:eek:. They were to embark on the 14th and were in Italy when everything went 'to schettino' (pardon my Italian). They spent an additional two nights in Italy waiting for their return flight and I am SO thankful they had the insurance! We bought it never imagining they would need it for this, but are so thankful that we purchased it, nevertheless!

 

At least they were on the subsequent sailing:eek:.

[MamaParrotHead]

I ALWAYS buy insurance, I also use insuremytrip dot com. My son also has asthma, along with food allergies, so access to medical services and emergency plans are always in the forefront of my mind.