Travel Medical Insurance

[Alicomp]

We are planning our first cruise outside the US after becoming eligible for medicare. This means we won't have medical insurance while outside the US. Does anyone have recommendations of insurance companies that sell international travel medical insurance? I googled it and found companies that sell it, but am looking for recommendations.

 

Thank you.

[Happy2cruise]

We use tripinsurancestore.com to purchase our travel insurance. You can checkout their website or if you prefer call one their reps and they will help you in finding the coverage you need for your situation and needs.

[ddgg]

Go to insuremytrip.com. They will compare dozens of different companies and policies. I usually get a policy from Travelguard. It's relatively inexpensive. I've purchased policies for 4 different trips. I had to make a claim on the first 2, and they paid fairly fast and with little hassle.

[Times Prince]

We are planning our first cruise outside the US after becoming eligible for medicare. This means we won't have medical insurance while outside the US. Does anyone have recommendations of insurance companies that sell international travel medical insurance? I googled it and found companies that sell it, but am looking for recommendations.

 

Thank you.

The Princess insurance provides secondary coverage during the cruise for medical visits, which you submit to your Medicare supplemental insurance provider first as primary, stating "Foreign Provider". Medicare does not, however, cover medicines prescribed and taken out of country. The Princess insurance will cover it. We get the Platinum upgrade automatically, but if not eligible for this it might be worth the purchase.

[Pam in CA]

Medicare doesn't pay a dime once you board a ship. It doesn't cover anything on the ship or outside the US. We have supplemental insurance with Anthem Blue Cross, buy Princess insurance, and get an annual policy with MedJet Assist.

 

Most independent travel insurance is more expensive for us "older" people; they are often age-based. The Princess insurance isn't but it covers only what you book through Princess, not independent flights or hotels.

 

MedJet Assist can be purchased for just your cruise. They will fly you from anywhere in the world to wherever you want. Most travel insurance pays for travel to the nearest approved medical center, which could be thousands of miles from home.

 

Should you have a medical bill, Medicare pays nothing, Anthem Blue Cross or other supplemental insurance pays minus your deductible. Princess insurance would pay what your supplemental insurance doesn't. That's been our experience.

[Keith1010]

We find our policies using insuremytrip.com

 

Very easy to use.

 

MedJet is very good but we purchase that on top of medical insurance because it covers transport but not the medical cost. If you are a member of AARP you can get a discount using your AARP membership to purchase the MedJet.

 

Keith

[flamomo]

I always buy the Princess insurance, and had occasion to visit the ship's medical center on a cruise last Fall after I fell while on an independent tour and lacerated my lip and sprained my wrist. The fees for getting my lip sutured, xraying my wrist, and being provided a splint for the wrist, as well as pain medication, and 5 days later having the sutures removed, totaled over $600.

 

When I got home, I first filed a claim with my AARP Medicare supplement (I buy the one that includes foreign travel). After the $250 deductible, they paid something over $200. I then filed a claim with the Princess insurance for the remaining costs, and I received a check from them with 2 weeks for the remainder of the charges, as well as the deductible. I was not one penny out-of-pocket for any of it.

 

I also have a a membership in MedJetAssist. Initially I only bought one that covered the 21 days that I would be on a cruise. After returning home from that one and booking 3 more cruises, I purchased an annual membership. I just hope I never need to use it!!

[ccrain]

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=635

 

Has useful discussions on options. You need to decide how much to insure, whether you want primary or secondary coverage, if you want to include trip interruption or cancellation and a lot depends on where you are going.

 

You really need to look carefully at the pre-existing exclusions and look back requirements. There is only one or two insurers that offer pre-existing coverage at final payment. Most require insurance coverage from initial payment.

 

Insuremytrip offers a neat place to compare multiple policies, but there are others for comparison as well. I recommend you visit them all. Prices are not really that different from site to site - varying only by a dollar or two.

 

For example to go to Europe, we decided on a comprehensive policy that is primary on Medical, with a work cancellation clause, insuring about 75% of the trip cost, looked back only 60 days for pre-existing, received very high reviews AND responded to customer issues directly on several of the "complaint" type websites. We supplemented this with a Med-Jet Assist policy to ensure we can always get home.

 

Now, for the CA cruises next year with very few actual foreign ports, we will go with Princess insurance (if our pre-existings stay pre-existing), which is secondary in medical, but offers a 100% credit for cancellation. Our private health insurance will stay primary and we will keep the med-jet assist.

 

The sheer number of options can be daunting, but there are a lot of people on these boards that can help and have had actual experience with various insurance companies.

 

Good Luck!

[Alicomp]

OP here. Thanks to everyone for your replies. We are planning to get a medicare supplemental plan that covers foreign travel and will then purchase an emergency evacuation plan. Plus we have the Princess Platinum insurance.

 

You've all been very helpful to us medicare newbies.

[Hlitner]

I guess having spent 33 years in the medical insurance industry makes me a bit outspoken on the topic (among other topics). We have never seen a cruise line trip insurance policy that had good medical insurance limits. Personally, we would never consider any medical coverage (primary or secondary) that did not offer at a MINIMUM, $100,000 of major med and at least $50,000 of trip evacuation coverage. Personally, since we take many trips throughout the year, we simply buy an Annual Travel Medical Policy (ours is HTH-Gold) that has $250,000 of Medical coverage (which even includes some dental coverage) and $500,000 in Trip Evacuation Coverage. That policy covers any trip we take during a year for up to 70 days per trip. The cost is $349 per year (and that is the total cost for both DW and myself). There are other good travel med policies and one can certainly shop at Insuremytrip.com or Squaremouth.com. I should also mention that American Express sells an annual Travel Med policy to their card holders

 

Hank

[sassyredhat]

We always get the upgraded policies with Travel Guard.

Pat

[Hlitner]

We always get the upgraded policies with Travel Guard.

 

Pat

 

I think we need to clarify the issue. The OP specifically asked about Travel Medical Insurance...and this is a different product then the typical Trip Cancellation/Travel Med policy sold by Travel Guard. If we were to insure a 60 day trip to France through Travelguard (Platinum)our cost (for just this one trip) would be in excess of $2100. Now we are assuming a trip cost of $10,000 per person ($20,000 total) and that Travelguard Policy would include cancellation insurance for that money. But for over $2000 for that single trip DW and I would only get $50,000 of medical coverage.

 

Now compare that to your typical annual travel medical policy like I mentioned in our previous post. We would not have any cancellation insurance but we would have $250,000 of medical insurance. And rather then pay over $2100 for a single trip, our travel med would cover every trip we take throughout the entire year and the total cost would be only $349 (for the entire year....not just one trip). Bottom line is that with Travelguard at least $1700 of that single trip premium would be going towards trip cancellation (with a maximum liability of $20,000) with only a small part of your premium going for medical coverage that we think is inadequate for most folks. Keep in mind that the most you can lose on a cancellation would be the cost of the trip....but what happens if you have a serious illness and quickly rack-up $100,000 or more in medical bills?

 

If we insured each of our trips, in a single year, with Travel Guard Platinum our annual out of pocket cost for the premiums would exceed $10,000 (we travel 5-6 months a year). So by not buying cancellation insurance we can get much better medical insurance and save nearly $10,000 in annual insurance premiums. For that amount of annual savings we prefer to self-insure our cancellation costs. Over the years we figure that we are ahead by over $150,000 by not having spent our money on cancellation insurance...

 

My point n posting this is not to dissuade folks from buying cancellation insurance...but rather to open some eyes on the risk vs rewards issues of various types of policies.

 

Hank

[CasaM]

Hank, we had made the determination that what you described of just getting medical and evacuation insurance and self insuring for the actual costs of the cruise would work best for us for our upcoming river cruise.

 

We looked into the yearly HTH that you mentioned and something called GeoBlue comes up on their website, which states that you have to be enrolled in a primary health plan to be eligible. We are enrolled in Medicare so I'm not sure that would be any help for overseas so I don't know if we would qualify. Do you happen to know?

[CasaM]

I decided to just go ahead and give GeoBlue a call. Medicare qualifies to make me eligible. $349 for a year of medical/evacuation coverage for our overseas trips. The rep was very helpful in answering all questions. I think this is the way to go for us.

[goodoldan]

We use tripinsurancestore.com to purchase our travel insurance. You can checkout their website or if you prefer call one their reps and they will help you in finding the coverage you need for your situation and needs.

 

Ditto the above. Steve at tripinsurancestore.com was extremely helpful and offered a number of different plans for our Back-to-back cruises in the Caribbean. They were much less than the plan offered by each of the cruise lines (we're on two different lines), and provided better coverage (including medical evac) for our entire trip in a single plan. Only cost us $156 total for two weeks.

 

Dan

[GeezerCouple]

Ditto the above. Steve at tripinsurancestore.com was extremely helpful and offered a number of different plans for our Back-to-back cruises in the Caribbean. They were much less than the plan offered by each of the cruise lines (we're on two different lines), and provided better coverage (including medical evac) for our entire trip in a single plan. Only cost us $156 total for two weeks.

 

Dan

 

I can't say enough good things about TripInsuranceStore.com - and yes, Steve in particular.

 

Becky (out on new maternity leave, apparently ;-) and Deanna (sp?) are also very helpful.

 

Steve goes out of his way to suggest other choices, giving the pros and cons (what is or is not covered, what costs more or less) AND, really importantly, he proactively asks if you might need coverage for this or that, because it wouldn't be included in the policy we were considering, etc.

 

Given that the policies all cost the same no matter where you get them (which broker, or directly from the insurer), this is a no-brainer in our minds.

[Hmmmm, "no brainer" "in our minds"?? Uh, that doesn't sound so good...! :eek: ]

 

He even took the time to check about some questions we had about a very different type of policy. I thought he had forgotten, and figured it wouldn't have worked anyway.

Then... he contacted us to let us know that he had wanted to make sure that he got the specific answer right, for our purposes.

(Turned out it will probably be useful for a series of shorter trips that are specifically business-related, but probably not for the cruises or other major travel.)

 

It's about the best service we've had recently, anywhere.

 

GeezerCouple

[wristband]

Put me down as yet another big fan of Steve & staff at the insurance store.

 

We have used TIS for years on cruises and been very pleased. What? A service-oriented business that offers products/policies they have vetted and then devotes time to each customer on the telephone to make sure their needs are addressed (rather than filling in a form on a web site for a policy that may or may not be suitable to one's situation).

[mudscraper]

Put me down as yet another big fan of Steve & staff at the insurance store.

 

We have used TIS for years on cruises and been very pleased. What? A service-oriented business that offers products/policies they have vetted and then devotes time to each customer on the telephone to make sure their needs are addressed (rather than filling in a form on a web site for a policy that may or may not be suitable to one's situation).

An excellent group of people to deal with. We have used their services on several trips.