Photofinish4

What an interesting and informative post, J&L. I'm sorry about your MIL, but I really appreciate the information that you shared. Thank you.

 

The cost for elderly family members is prohibitively expensive, unless we use the Cruise Care insurance. There are better plans on the 3rd party market, but they are based on age. The other downside, is that if you are sharing a cabin with elderly family member, everyone has to take Cruise Care.

 

We are looking at Medjet for ourselves. Mom has reached an age where she won't be going on any more cruises with us. :)

I had not looked at the age requirement good point. We were considering insuring just trip by trip but for only 100 more we got year round coverage 395 for family plan year round. Thanks for the feed back

I am sailing on a Norway Fjords cruise with my elderly grandmother. She is in good health, but still am concerned about medical evacuation coverage. She wants to purchase the CruiseCare thinking that she'll be covered, but the coverage is only $25,000, and then $25,000 for repatriation, heaven forbid. That seems awfully low. But at her age, private travel insurance is so very expensive. And I'm not sure if the coverage will just take her to a hospital in Norway, or if it will pay to bring her home. If anyone can shed some light on what to do, it would be appreciated.

I have some personal experience with this topic. We booked a family cruise in 2011 to sail in Oct 2012. My mother in law died on that cruise and we learned a lot about insurance coverage. My mother in law was 85 and in fair health when we booked. In Sept she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She decided not to treat it as the cemo would have been to hard on her. The Dr. told her that many people choose to go on a family trip and spend as much quality time with family. We already had this cruise booked and Dr. advised that she should be fine as the cancer was in early stages. We took the trip and she was fine through the 5th day. Formal night and Family pictures and show. When she laid down for the night she was having difficulty breathing so we took her to the infirmary on board. They advised thagt her lungs were filling with fluid and she would have to get off the ship as soon as we docked in Halifax Nova Scotia in the morning. Ambulance was waiting at the pier. There were seven of us and we all got off. She was admitted to Hospital and I started working on Med Evac. We used the Cruise lines travel insurance RCCL Berekely Care. I quickly learnd that Med Evac did not apply as she was already at a treating facility. (READ tHE FINE PRINT) So I started working other angles to get her home. The hospital advised that Angel Flight just flew someone in and if we were interested we could get a discounted rate because they were already in town and we would not have to pay for them getting here. The discounted rate was $36,000 From Halifax to Southern Calif. We had a family meeting and decided to go for it. (It’s had to make those big decisions in a time of turmoil). It turned out that she refused to fly without a family member. They were going to pull the nurse and put my wife in that seat. The doctors were fine with that. I said that if you pull the nurse its no longer a Med Flight and why couldn”t we charter a private Jet so we could all fly together. They advised that they would sign off on that. I arranged for was able to locate a plane but before final arrangements the Dr advise that she could not fly at all as her lungs would not handle any flight. We then arranged for a motorhome to drive all of us home. Hurricane Sandy put a stop to that plan and the Dr was not real comfortable with it anyway as she would probably die in the middle of the trip and we would be held up in an unwitnessed death investigation. We decided to rent an apartment and wait it out. She died the day we moved into the apartment. That’s the story now for the coverage. We had trip interruption through RCCL Berkely Care. I already covered the MED EVAC issue.

RCCL sent a local rep to the Hospital to ensure that I had all contact numbers that I needed and a local contact if needed. All their offices on east coast were closed due to Hurricane Sandy so they gave me the Care Team contact in London. I must say that all my phone contacts with Berekely Care and RCCL were professional and supportive. Berkeley Care advised that they were a secondary policy and all medical claims needed to be submitted to her primary insurance first and anything they did not cover would be covered by them. They told me to keep track of our expenses for the trip interruption claim.

The bills were as follows. Ship infirmary $5,000 for treatment from 1am to 7am. We were not aware of this until we got home and canceled her credit cards. RCCL simply billed the card on file and did not let us know they did that. $1,200 for ambulance ride from pier to Hospital about 4 miles, $25,000 for the Hospital stay. Her primary insurance covered all of that 100% so we did not have to submit any of that to Berkeley Care. Upon her death Berkeley advised us to pick a local mortuary and they would handle to rest. We picked one and they covered all transportation from hospital to our mortuary of choice back home. This included body prep, embalming and a casket or shipping container. That all went very smoothly with no problems. The problems arose on the trip interruption portion. It turns out that Berkely Care limits the interruption payout to 1 and ½ times your original airfare. Well needless to say that was nearly maxed out with our return flights so they covered our return airfares, and a small portion of food, lodging, and car rental. We were able to get a voucher from the airlines for our missed return flights. After all of this my point is if we would have taken out a MEDJET Plan for Med Evac. I could have made one call. Chose a hospital of our choice back home and we would not have had to go through all of this, and she would have died at home. Needless to say we are taking out a Med Jet plan on our upcoming cruise. (http://www.medjet.com)

Hope this helps, John and Lynnea

I am sailing on a Norway Fjords cruise with my elderly grandmother. She is in good health, but still am concerned about medical evacuation coverage. She wants to purchase the CruiseCare thinking that she'll be covered, but the coverage is only $25,000, and then $25,000 for repatriation, heaven forbid. That seems awfully low. But at her age, private travel insurance is so very expensive. And I'm not sure if the coverage will just take her to a hospital in Norway, or if it will pay to bring her home. If anyone can shed some light on what to do, it would be appreciated.

O replied to this thread and entered but I do not see it anywhere??? It was quite lengthy so Ill send this to see if it posts be fore I respond again

We will never leave without credit cards. Our last experience on a cruise this summer made us a firm believer. Our flight was delayed because Obama was going to land so they froze up the airport. this made us miss our connecting flight to England. We were rerouted to Germany and then to England. Buy this time our ship was sailing and would be 2 days before it's first port. Even though we had insurance we had to pay up front. We needed a hotel that night in England, a flight the next day to coppenhagen and a hotel. also meals and transportation. It is something you do not think about. another cruise 6 months before we had my mother with us in Canada. She became ill and we had to get off the ship. She was in the hospital 1 week before she passed away. Hotel,meals, rental car and a flight back home. You really need a credit card for emergencies.

It is on the aft....has a balcony that "kinda" goes from the side to the next balcony 1690....there is a pole in the room (unless things have changed) near the end of your bed. This is a support pole. Please do not run into it at night if you get up; however feel free to practice pole dancing! LOL! I like to get 1690 instead due to bigger balcony or 1390 same room just starboard. Room is nice on all of these.

 

Lou

thankyou for the information.

Try this thread.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1930336&highlight=1388

 

We had 1388 on Navigator and loved it!!

thankyou for your response. Is the pole in the way of the tv if watching in bed?:)

can anyone tell me about cabin 1688 on aos and the balcony