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Travel Insurance


SG5492
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Homeowner and auto insurance are not a fair comparison. The risk of loss of a home due to catastrophe or vehicle loss/liability is substantial and unpredictable.

 

The loss due to a cruise cancelation is predictable (again, just the trip. I always have comprehensive health coverage). I spend a predictable average amount of $$ on a cruise. If you take a substantial number of cruises, at some point the cost of insurance will exceed the cost of missing one of them, and eventually more than one. The more cruises you take, the more you can afford to cancel. The only way the math doesn’t work is if you cancel very early in your cruising history, or cancel multiple cruises too close together. I feel the risk of that is quite low.

 

I have a cruise booked this July, without insurance. I can cancel that trip and eat the entire cost easily. It would not even come close to the $$ I’ve saved by not purchasing trip insurance on many past cruises. Actually, at this point, I could cancel 3-4 cruises before I start to realize a loss overall. I think the odds are in my favour.

 

Cheers,

Darrin

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I agree that trip cancellation insurance might not be important for most cruises but imho medical & evacuation insurance is VERY important so I am glad you have that.

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As always, with insurance, the point is, you have to look at YOUR situation. And YOUR needs. And YOUR allowable risk level.

 

Not everyone's health insurance covers them outside their home country. And even if it does, it may require that you pay any and all fees, then submit to your insurance for reimbursement (which may also happen with trip insurance).

 

Very few health care plans have medical evacuation coverage. But if that is all you need, there is Medjet Assist for JUST med evac coverage.

 

As many have said, YOUR age and personal medical and work situations will affect YOUR decision.

 

But the ONE constant is, if you don't buy insurance, and get caught out, do NOT expect any sympathy here in CC. :D

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First time cruisers.....not sure what travel insurance is and is it truly needed? Is it medical insurance or is it insurance on your vacation incase you end up not being able to go? If it is medical, will our insurance cover us? We are going to the Bahamas and have Federal Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

 

There are often large gaps in coverage in your medical coverage. Travel insurance is not that expensive (as long as you don't buy through the cruise line) and covers a lot more than major medical. Insuremytrip.com allows you to compare different carriers.

 

One example: my wife fell ill halfway through a Caribbean cruise, and between the medical expenses and trip interruption the insurance claim came to about $10,000, not counting evacuation (the travel insurance paid the evacuation directly so I don't know what that came to).

 

It is very, very expensive. Easily $25,000 within the continental US. More from Europe or a cruise ship.

 

https://www.squaremouth.com/travel-advice/medical-evacuation-and-repatriation-how-much-coverage-do-i-need/

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There are often large gaps in coverage in your medical coverage. Travel insurance is not that expensive (as long as you don't buy through the cruise line) and covers a lot more than major medical. Insuremytrip.com allows you to compare different carriers.

 

It is very, very expensive. Easily $25,000 within the continental US. More from Europe or a cruise ship.

 

Through the cruise line can be cheaper. It depends on coverage at age. My parents, at 87, through RCI was MUCH cheaper than 3rd party. Like anything, shop around.

 

Medical evacuation from Halifax to DC was $29,000.

 

From the cruise ship is typically free to land, as it is supplied by a government agency, not commercial company. But then commercial company from closest land to where you want to be.

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What about the travel and trip cancelation insurance provided by credit card? I just booked my first cruise and checked with CC who had same coverage offered by cruise line and medical insurance from work was covering transportation costs in case of emergency. What am I missing? Will check the insuremytrip site as I have already paid for the cruise and cannot get cruise insurance from the cruise line now.

 

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk

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  • 7 months later...

My question has to do with Travel Insurance. We put down a deposit for a River Cruise with SmarTour Danube Discovery in 2019. Their TripMate Insurance has the lowest premium but has also very bad review from customers. In doing research on line looking at Square Mouth and Insuredmytrip.com, I found many companies but they all appear to be glad to take your premium but NO customer service when you need to file a claim . Even the big companies Aliantz & AIG Travel Guard have lots of negative reviews on line. Any advice on travel insurance would be appreciated. I am looking to buy Travel Insurance with a company that will make me jump through the least amount of hoops in case of a claim. Does such company exist ? Thank you.

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There's a Cruise & Travel Insurance section of Cruise Critic where you may obtain better answers.

 

I can offer my own personal experience. We had an incident when insured with CSA on a cruise. Since much of the trip coverage is secondary we had to wait to get an EOB from our regular health insurance before we could finalize the CSA claim. The health insurance company misplaced the claim for about 3 months (don't ask) but CSA was very accommodating. But they were very rigid about what the travel insurance covered and when coverage ended - I had to travel back to New York to retrieve the car, but my travel insurance was deemed terminated when I crossed my home threshold with my sick wife, so the travel cost to New York wasn't covered. Irritating, but stated that way in the policy.

 

More generally on InsureMyTrip I look primarily at the AM Best rating, and to a much lesser degree the star rating on InsureMyTrip. I figure the AM Best rating has more data points and more well-rounded criteria than user star ratings.

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Oh, and also, CSA would make payments on approved expenses as they were submitted. So even though the hospital medical reimbursement was in limbo, other claims like trip interruption were paid within about 30 days of submission, as well as the shipboard medical expenses.

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Underwatr-- If the medical coverage is secondary with CSA then were you expected to pay your medical bills upfront with your Credit Card with both the hospital and the shipboard medical expense ? That can be a very big bill !

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Underwatr-- If the medical coverage is secondary with CSA then were you expected to pay your medical bills upfront with your Credit Card with both the hospital and the shipboard medical expense ? That can be a very big bill !

 

For all intents and purposes, travel insurance is actually indemnity coverage, even the "primary" ones. You pay the provider first and seek reimbursement from your insurance company.

 

Secondary insurance usually means you file a claim with your regular health insurance provider first and what ever they don't pay, your travel insurer will. Say you have Medicare, since Medicare doesn't cover outside of the US you will receive their claim denial letter; provide that letter to your travel insurer along with any documents they may require. A travel insurance policy that is "primary" you can skip the Medicare claim part.

 

In the unlikely event you end up in a Caribbean hospital for a couple of weeks and you have a "primary" policy, sometimes arrangements can be made for the hospital to receive payment directly from the insurer. You or your family member has to contact the insurer immediately and get them involved with the hospital bureaucracy.

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I have had Allianz for my SO on a trip, and she needed some medical care.

 

Allianz did have some hoops to jump through, but paid quickly once I got them the paperwork they needed.

 

My parents were insured on a trip by Royal Carib and had to use the coverage. The company was very helpful, and even negotiated with the med evac provider to accept the maximum coverage as payment in full (they wanted $29K, coverage was $25K, and they accepted), and paid them directly. I am not sure about the hospital, if they paid directly or my Dad paid and was reimbursed.

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Underwatr-- If the medical coverage is secondary with CSA then were you expected to pay your medical bills upfront with your Credit Card with both the hospital and the shipboard medical expense ? That can be a very big bill !

I had to present a credit card for ER admission as well as for tests, such as CT scan at the hospital (different service providers within the facility). This was in St. Lucia. The total hospital bill was on the order of $6,000, shipboard medical and administrative expenses were around $1,000 and trip interruption was about $5,000 ($3,000 unused cruise portion plus $2,000 out of pocket lodging and transportation costs for me). I didn't see the bill for her medical evacuation (commercial flight with medical escort).

 

In there US my medical insurance would have paid upfront but any medical insurance I've had covers overseas on a reimbursement basis. I travel with an unused high-limit credit card in case of events like this.

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Depends for us.

If we are flying SWA, I don't worry about it for the flights---can cancel up until the last minute & get a credit or points refunded.

Winter cruise--ALWAYS.

Costly cruise--ALWAYS.

I go to InsureMyTrip.com & have been able to get decent coverage for about 3.5% of the total cost of the trip. (covers , cancellation--due to medical, weather, etc.-- interruption, etc.)

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I know most seem to promote that trip insurance is important when booking a cruise. I'd like to offer a different point of view....

 

When I started cruising, I decided to not purchase trip insurance. These are the factors I used:

 

1. I cruised often.. 2-3 times a year. That's actually less often than some. This is a factor in considering trip insurance. The more trips, the more spent on insurance. With a larger number of trips, the overall cost of insurance vs the risk of missing a cruise becomes unreasonable. If I take 10 cruises, what's the risk of missing more than one of them? It's not very high. Whereas, the $$ saved by not purchasing insurance for 10 cruises is high enough to be able to write off a missed cruise. The ratio gets better with more cruises. I've yet to miss a cruise, so I've saved enough insurance fees to pay for 2-3 cruises.

 

2. Health Insurance. I have travel health insurance coverage provided by my employer (even for personal trips). So I don't need trip insurance for potential health expenses. Even if I didn't have my own health insurance, I'd just buy health insurance for my trips... not trip insurance.

 

Anyways, not everyone is in the same situation. If I was only cruising once in a blue moon, I'd probably buy trip insurance.I do follow the universal advice of always arriving a day or two in advance of the sail date. This has definitely avoided a missed sailing twice for me.

 

Darrin

 

I agree w you sort of.

 

With regard to travel insurance, until the cruise that I will be taking in a few months, we have never taken travel insurance. I figure as does Trumpeter that I can self insure for the costs if I have to cancel my cruise. Also, most of the stuff that is thrown in such as loss of baggage, trip delay, etc. is in my opinion totally useless.

 

That said, I did take a policy that includes cancellation on my upcoming trip to the Falklands and South Georgia. This is the most expensive trip that I have ever taken and I do not want to self insure on a more than 15k trip.

 

If your company provides travel health insurance that covers trips out of country, I agree that you don't need it. Just be sure that the coverage limits are high enough.

 

One thing that Trumpeter did not mention is evacuation insurance. It can cost a lot to get you from where you fall ill or have an accident to an "appropriate" medical facility and I will bet that the policy from your employer does not cover that. If you travel to out-of-the-way places or on expedition trips, the transportation costs are even higher. On my South Georgia trip, I will have 500k evacuation coverage. When I went to Antarctica, I had 1 million in evacuation coverage.

 

Some people even add a MedJet policy to cover getting from the "appropriate" medical facility to home. Imagine the cost of getting from say Japan to your home in the US on a chartered medical jet. We have chosen not to take this coverage.

 

If you travel a lot, a good option is an annual policy. We have taken a high limit annual policy that covers all the trips (everyone of them) that we take for a full year including medical and evacuation.. The last time we renewed it, it cost about $800 for the year. A bargain in my opinion.

 

Hope tbis helps.

 

DON

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I agree w you sort of.

 

With regard to travel insurance, until the cruise that I will be taking in a few months, we have never taken travel insurance. I figure as does Trumpeter that I can self insure for the costs if I have to cancel my cruise. Also, most of the stuff that is thrown in such as loss of baggage, trip delay, etc. is in my opinion totally useless.

 

That said, I did take a policy that includes cancellation on my upcoming trip to the Falklands and South Georgia. This is the most expensive trip that I have ever taken and I do not want to self insure on a more than 15k trip.

 

If your company provides travel health insurance that covers trips out of country, I agree that you don't need it. Just be sure that the coverage limits are high enough.

 

One thing that Trumpeter did not mention is evacuation insurance. It can cost a lot to get you from where you fall ill or have an accident to an "appropriate" medical facility and I will bet that the policy from your employer does not cover that. If you travel to out-of-the-way places or on expedition trips, the transportation costs are even higher. On my South Georgia trip, I will have 500k evacuation coverage. When I went to Antarctica, I had 1 million in evacuation coverage.

 

Some people even add a MedJet policy to cover getting from the "appropriate" medical facility to home. Imagine the cost of getting from say Japan to your home in the US on a chartered medical jet. We have chosen not to take this coverage.

 

If you travel a lot, a good option is an annual policy. We have taken a high limit annual policy that covers all the trips (everyone of them) that we take for a full year including medical and evacuation.. The last time we renewed it, it cost about $800 for the year. A bargain in my opinion.

 

Hope tbis helps.

 

DON

 

Insurance is mostly a waste, in my opinion. I agree with you about delays, baggage, and all of those things. People make those kinds of decisions with feelings, not with logic. We'll pay a crap ton for benefits that will never balance out in the long run.

 

Now if you are going to super remote locations, then yes, you might want to look at options, especially for evacuation. Also a good idea if you are a high risk. 1 million in evacuation coverage seems excessive though, even in Antarctica. I've never heard of it costing more than 250,000, but at least you're covered, right?

 

For me, my Chase Sapphire Reserve has more than enough travel insurance coverage. For the average person, it is also enough. Cruising to the Bahamas, Carribean, or European ports doesn't require thousands of dollars in travel insurance in most cases. People don't know what they have, or need. At the end of our lives, if we added up how much we spent on insurance, it is sad.

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As I have stated a number of times, you can buy a trip insurance policy with $0 coverage for the trip itself. This gives you the medical, evac, lost luggage, etc, etc. It just does not over the cost of the cruise itself.

 

This can run as low as $30 - $40 for a typical week cruise.

 

So you can get coverages for not much, if you are willing to self insure for the cruise cost itself.

 

MedJet has one additional advantage. You can choose to be evaced and to WHERE, as long as you are more than 150 miles from home. Other coverages may require that the medical personnel order your evac, and you may not have a choice where they will take you.

 

For cost, my Mother had to be med evaced from Halifax, Nova Scotia back to Washington DC area. $29,000.

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