Mike Walker
Contributor
My experience has been many, many things trying to package travel medical insurance in as an add-on. I have about 4 different policies 'included' from various CC and other products.
The tough part is coordinating them all but the key limit seems to be length of trip. Most 'throw in' policies have a fairly restrictive trip length limit. I'm lucky that for my normal health insurance the included travel portion is 17 days and coordinates well with what I'm covered for at home.
That being said, for Canadians, a very useful option is 'top up' coverage from Manulife. For me it was $3/day to extend that 17 days to 20. Most other providers want you to buy another full overlapping plan. Nine dollars well spent and way more affordable than all the other quotes I was looking at from the typical providers.
For me the Canadian version of DAN is a foregone conclusion for any diving - the cost vs. potential benefit there makes it impossible to argue against. As noted by others it does include some non-diving coverage as well.
My general feeling is that dedicated trip cancellation insurance is not a good deal. I've never seen a situation where my entire trip cost would be gone if I needed to cancel. I spread costs over a couple of credit cards with various included insurances and there are usually options with flights to pay a change fee and use it for a different trip or take a credit and recover some of the costs. Similarly, refundable hotel rooms where I can and rental cars are pretty much always cancellable up to the day of. Certainly there will be some impact, but if you're eating the entire trip cost due to a cancellation: you're doing it wrong.
The tough part is coordinating them all but the key limit seems to be length of trip. Most 'throw in' policies have a fairly restrictive trip length limit. I'm lucky that for my normal health insurance the included travel portion is 17 days and coordinates well with what I'm covered for at home.
That being said, for Canadians, a very useful option is 'top up' coverage from Manulife. For me it was $3/day to extend that 17 days to 20. Most other providers want you to buy another full overlapping plan. Nine dollars well spent and way more affordable than all the other quotes I was looking at from the typical providers.
For me the Canadian version of DAN is a foregone conclusion for any diving - the cost vs. potential benefit there makes it impossible to argue against. As noted by others it does include some non-diving coverage as well.
My general feeling is that dedicated trip cancellation insurance is not a good deal. I've never seen a situation where my entire trip cost would be gone if I needed to cancel. I spread costs over a couple of credit cards with various included insurances and there are usually options with flights to pay a change fee and use it for a different trip or take a credit and recover some of the costs. Similarly, refundable hotel rooms where I can and rental cars are pretty much always cancellable up to the day of. Certainly there will be some impact, but if you're eating the entire trip cost due to a cancellation: you're doing it wrong.
