Do you use Travel Insurance

[Reef Madness]

So, I checked my medical insurance and I’m covered internationally for both emergency and urgent care (emergency is life saving, urgent is unexpected illness). No coverage for getting home or excess hotel days but I can handle that risk.

 

[jonhall]

I'm about to find out how well they will handle a much bigger claim as I had a trip interruption on a land/cruise tour of Alaska. Much more expensive policy but will be asking for airfare, cruise costs, hotel, and food. Can't wait to see how it all works out. Will try to remember and report back in this thread.

Update:

We had purchased an Allianz plan through the agent we used to book our Holland cruise.

I asked for everything I mentioned in my previous post. Filed claim online on Aug. 31. Holland gave us refunds on excursions and gave us a non-refundable cruise credit for the portion of the land/cruise we didn't get to continue on (to be used by Aug. 2023.) American Airlines refunded my miles and $$ for my return flight. My wife had a non-refundable ticket, so received a non-refundable credit which would expire in November of this year. On Sept. 7, Allianz processed a payment to our checking account for the costs of our new airfare home, hotel room, and food. I had made one phone call to Allianz about 4-5 days after making the claim simply to ask if they would pay on the credits we received - was told it was up to the reviewer. At that point we decided to go ahead and use the credits. We rebooked the cruise (and still have cruise credit left) and was able to use wife's airline credit.

Couple of notes:

*If I heard the Holland rep correctly, had we used Holland's protection plan (insurance), we would have received a refund for the cruise/tour we didn't get to complete instead of the credit.

*Paid cash for the taxi to airport and from the airport to our home. Had I paid by credit card and received a receipt (or maybe just gotten a receipt) I feel 100% sure if included it in the claim, I would have gotten that back also. Have to remember that in case there's a next time.

Other than that, thought the claim was paid out pretty quick, especially when even the agent I spoke with on that one phone call said they were behind in processing claims and it could be several weeks.

 

[noserider]

So, I checked my medical insurance and I’m covered internationally for both emergency and urgent care (emergency is life saving, urgent is unexpected illness). No coverage for getting home or excess hotel days but I can handle that risk.

I think we have a major difference in starting points.

Medical care in Europe is primarily provided by the state and if you are an EU national traveling outside of the EU then you have no medical coverage, so insurance is routinely bought and an accepted cost. However in the US with its reliance on private medical care many have medical insurance (albeit often basic) as part of their standard when overseas.

I would not disregard the cost of medivac's flights they can and do happen and a flight form the US to UK, start at circa US$60K and from Thailand to UK would be US$75k, if you can ride that cost great but if not surely insurance is worth it

 

[Jcp2]

I think we have a major difference in starting points.

Medical care in Europe is primarily provided by the state and if you are an EU national traveling outside of the EU then you have no medical coverage, so insurance is routinely bought and an accepted cost. However in the US with its reliance on private medical care many have medical insurance (albeit often basic) as part of their standard when overseas.

I would not disregard the cost of medivac's flights they can and do happen and a flight form the US to UK, start at circa US$60K and from Thailand to UK would be US$75k, if you can ride that cost great but if not surely insurance is worth it

Private medical insurance in the United States can be limited in geography so I get supplemental travel medical insurance even when vacationing outside my region of my state. Some narrow networks are narrow indeed.