Do you all buy travel insurance??

[Ken076]

Does cruise insurance cover you in full if you have to cancel your fully paid cruise with in months of departure date if there is a serious health, accident, death of a family member, parent, children, grandchildren? None of which are going on the cruise. How about the basic ones the cruise line offers about $70.00 per person for a seven day caribbean cruise?

 

Most Policies cover your Cancellation for Illness/death of Relative or Traveling companion (Roommate). You have to be careful to read the Policies you're considering to verify:

• specifically which relatives are covered,
  
• the wording that qualifies how ill/injured they must be to "prevent" you from traveling, and
  
• whether (any) "pre-existing condition" disclaimer applies to non-traveling relatives illness/injury.
  

The Carnival Policy has IMO VERY LOW medical coverage, marginally adequate MedEvac coverage, and is usually much pricier than the Policies offered by CSA, TravelInsured, TravelEx, etc.

 

The Carnival Cancellation covers if you cancel for "sickness, injury or death to yourself, a traveling companion, or members of either of your immediate families which is diagnosed and treated by a physician at the time your cruise vacation is terminated"

Immediate Family Member includes your or the Traveling Companion’s spouse, child, spouse’s child, son-daughter-in-law, parent(s), sibling(s), grandparent(s), grandchild, step brother-sister, step-parent(s), parent(s)-in-law, brother-sister-in-law, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin, Domestic Partner, or ward.



It looks like the pre-existing exclusion applies only to the Traveling persons, not the non-traveling immediate family - I'd check this out.



ken

[golfb4cruzing]

7 cruises now and never wasted the money (jinx, spin 3 times, salt over shoulder)

[JLC@SD]

We are in our early 30's, very healthy and eat healthy, we are like the work out 6 times a week type people. Both DH and I never had any issues with our health, maybe catch cold once a year??

Healthy folks in their 30s can have accidents .....and can miss the ship as easily as older folks ......;)

[SMSACE6]

When I was young and very foolish, the thought never entered my mind to buy insurance. Now I am old and jaded, or is that older and smarter?! I live in Canada, 45 mins from the American border, and I even have insurance these days for my one day shopping trips to the US.

 

I would not consider for one second going on a cruise without travel insurance.

Edited December 16, 2012 by SMSACE6

[richstowe]

As others have pointed out, many people already have coverage either from their credit cards

or from their employee health plans. We are doubly covered plus our kids are also covered

by their University health plans. Certainly not all plans have the same coverage but we don't feel it is necessary

to over cover ourselves.

 

Besides this, my car insurance and Auto club (CAA/AAA) also have some elements of travel insurance built in.

 

Finally some TA's also include full or partial travel insurance.

[GRANNYOFSIX]

We absolutely buy travel insurance. We did have to use it once. My father-in-law passed away the day before our cruise..........insurance paid for everything, thank goodness!!!

[ray98]

I have never bought any travel insurance in the past. This trip I did buy single trip medical which includes accidental death, medical, dental, medical transportation and trip interruption coverage. I never checked to find how affordable it was, $15 for the two of us was a no brainer.

[richfret]

It all comes down to this (in Carnival's words):

 

Why should I purchase Carnival's Cruise Vacation Protection?

 

You’ve saved, you’ve waited and now you’re all set to go have a great shipload of fun – aboard a Carnival cruise. Preparing for your “Fun Ship” experience includes protecting yourself from unfortunate occurrences that threaten to interfere with your best-laid plans. By purchasing Carnival’s Cruise Vacation Protection – with our new “Cancel for Any Reason” feature – you can receive reimbursement for your otherwise non-refundable cancellation penalties, medical costs, baggage loss and delays, as well as gain access to a wide range of traveler’s assistance services.

 

Carnival’s Cruise Vacation Protection includes protects you with a 100% cash reimbursement of applicable penalties for cancellations due to

specified reasons, such as:

Someone in your immediate family has an illness or injury, even if they aren’t scheduled to travel with you.

You become ill and can’t travel.

You are involuntarily terminated or laid off by an employer.

A severe weather watch or warning is issued and affects your travel to the port of embarkation.

A common carrier delay due to inclement weather causes you to miss more than 50% of your cruise vacation.

 

Or, if you must cancel for ANY OTHER reason, our new “Cancel for Any Reason” feature will provide a future cruise credit equal to 75% of the applicable penalties.

 

Our plan also provides protection if:

A family member back home passes away and you must return from your vacation early.

Your luggage is lost by the airline.

You twist your ankle and must visit a doctor/clinic while traveling.

You incur any other unforeseeable events as listed in the Plan Description.

 

For your convenience, the cost of the plan will automatically appear as a option on your invoice. For a more complete description of the plan benefits,

terms, conditions, and exclusions please view our Plan Description.

 

(Now my words): One other factor to consider and that is pre existing conditions. If you are diabetic, have a heart condition or have or had any other serious condition, insurance is a must. Note that some travel insurance does not cover pre existing conditions while others do.

 

In conclusion, Do you need travel insurance? Absolutely "Probably!".

[trev71]

Always insurance and medical, you never know what can happen last min and throw a monkey wrench in your plan. Also being from Canada I am used to having free health care so when I leave Canada I always get medical insurance as well, ive heard of way too many horror stories.

[lakecabs]

I just purchased international medical insurance for a family of 4 for 7 days for $59. There is no deductible and each person has 100000 coverage. This does not cover a cancelled trip only health.

[FlightMedic555]

You can tell by my "name" that I have some experience. Obviously everyone's financial situation is different.

 

In my situation I am able to afford the $$ for the vacation and I could also afford any additional cost if I had to fly home unexpectedly. If I cruise in a winter season I always try to get to the departure city the day prior to avoid winter storm problems. If I have to cancel the cruise unexpectedly or have some of these other added costs I will be mightly pissed but I can afford this.

 

If I get sick overseas my current health insurance is excellent and will cover these costs.

 

If I have to be flown back to the US via an air ambulance I will go broke. Some have indicated a $25,000 charge. If you are being flown back from the Carribean figure more like $50,000. An easy $100,000 from Europe and about 18 months ago we flew a patient from NY back to India for $250,000. These are really, really big numbers.

 

For this reason I get evacuation insurance. Relatively inexpensive at places like www.medjetassist.com. You should look carefully at any evacuation insurance to see that you are getting the coverage you want. Most plans will fly the insured to the closest hospital that can provide care, no where you may want to go. On my recent cruise to Tahiti the closest hospital probably would have been New Zealand. Some policies allow for the insured to chose where they want to go which in most cases, after being stabilized locally, is back to your home city.

 

For specialty vacations such as a liveaboard for diving I would look into DAN insurance.

[FirstAlto]

You can tell by my "name" that I have some experience. Obviously everyone's financial situation is different.

 

In my situation I am able to afford the $$ for the vacation and I could also afford any additional cost if I had to fly home unexpectedly. If I cruise in a winter season I always try to get to the departure city the day prior to avoid winter storm problems. If I have to cancel the cruise unexpectedly or have some of these other added costs I will be mightly pissed but I can afford this.

 

If I get sick overseas my current health insurance is excellent and will cover these costs.

 

If I have to be flown back to the US via an air ambulance I will go broke. Some have indicated a $25,000 charge. If you are being flown back from the Carribean figure more like $50,000. An easy $100,000 from Europe and about 18 months ago we flew a patient from NY back to India for $250,000. These are really, really big numbers.

 

For this reason I get evacuation insurance. Relatively inexpensive at places like www.medjetassist.com. You should look carefully at any evacuation insurance to see that you are getting the coverage you want. Most plans will fly the insured to the closest hospital that can provide care, no where you may want to go. On my recent cruise to Tahiti the closest hospital probably would have been New Zealand. Some policies allow for the insured to chose where they want to go which in most cases, after being stabilized locally, is back to your home city.

 

For specialty vacations such as a liveaboard for diving I would look into DAN insurance.

 

Thank you so much for pointing out the most important reason for having trip insurance - when I read these posts about how healthy a person is I figure they don't realize that an accident or sudden life-threatening incident can happen to ANYONE - and can easily bankrupt you :eek::eek:

[bia]

Yes buy insurance. You never know what might happen. You could get sick the week before, or get in a wreck on the way to the cruise. There are to many things that could happen. Better safe than sorry.

 

we never took travel insurance before our up coming cruise. last august we were going on a european cruise, i fell broke my ankle ten days before the cruise was in surgey day of cruise all was lost. we have been on 37 cruises. now we will take insurance on any cruise over x amount.

 

bia

[richstowe]

we never took travel insurance before our up coming cruise. last august we were going on a european cruise, i fell broke my ankle ten days before the cruise was in surgey day of cruise all was lost. we have been on 37 cruises. now we will take insurance on any cruise over x amount.

 

bia

Hard to argue but did you ever think how much insurance would have been for those 37 cruises ?

 

Not saying you are wrong but by not insuring you probably saved the equivalent of at least a couple of cruises.

[mycruise2000]

Travelling in March. Is it too late to get travel insurance?

[cruiseco]

Travelling in March. Is it too late to get travel insurance?

 

Most third-party insurers actually allow you to buy a policy up until the day prior to departure so you're not too late. But you may not be eligible for some benefits such as any "Cancel For Any Reason" coverage or pre-existing medical condition coverage depending on when you booked the cruise. If it was in the last two weeks or so you'll have no problem finding that coverage. If it's been longer than that but you have not yet made the final payment on the cruise pre-ex coverage is still available from CSA and in some states Travel Guard also has a plan with that coverage.

[LuckyZ]

As others have pointed out, many people already have coverage from their employee health plans.

 

Be careful on this one that your companies insurance coverage didn't change. Years ago my company covered things like rental car insurance for personal trips, but at some point, that changed and they don't cover that anymore. I'm sure I have been on several trips before I discovered this fact that I waived rental car insurance, and hence, would have been personally liable in an accident.

 

I have also discovered that my coverage for out of country has been minimized and makes me worry about my personal expense if something happened.

[Coolhand]

My DW and I are in reasonably good shape as well for our ages but we always buy the travel insurance just in case something should go wrong. We have had to use it four times over the years, not because of us but for Deaths of family members, FIL, Uncle, BIL, and my Brother, which resulted in cruise cancellations, flights etc, All were covered minus the original cost of policies. We are the sandwhich generation and the ones in town with relatives. Peace of mind is priceless.:confused::confused:

[Midnight Cruiser]

Travelling in March. Is it too late to get travel insurance?

 

Actually, waiting to buy could make sense in some circumstances. In the case of the death of a family member, some insurance contracts will only pay for trip cancelation costs if the death occurs within 30 days of departure. So if your primary concern is the potential death of an aging parent, then buying the insurance anytime before 30 days prior to departure would be wasted money.

[Lessalt]

We always buy insurance and thank goodness we've never had to use it but it's worth it for peace of mind. A friend of mine had to be medically evacuated and she was grateful she had travel insurance. We buy our insurance from insuremytrip.com (no connection).

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

[austinhoops]

Actually, waiting to buy could make sense in some circumstances. In the case of the death of a family member, some insurance contracts will only pay for trip cancelation costs if the death occurs within 30 days of departure. So if your primary concern is the potential death of an aging parent, then buying the insurance anytime before 30 days prior to departure would be wasted money.

 

Actually, I'm not sure this is true.

 

I purchased insurance primarily for this reason. However, if the family member dies of what is considered a pre-existing health reason, one would have needed to purchase insurance with pre-existing coverage to be covered. In most cases, this type of policy needs to be purchased within 2-3 weeks of the initial down payment for the trip to include a pre-existing waiver. (I think CSA is one of the few companies that will allow you to purchase it later, but it's pricier.)

 

Worth sharing, because this wasn't obvious to me when I first explored travel insurance.

[donaldsc]

You have to balance out the cost of insurance versus the probability of having a problem and also the cost of correcting the problem. You also have to figure out how much money you are willing to potentially loose.

 

We carry a yearly policy that covers medical and evacuation for any trip domestic and foreign as long as we are more than a few hundred miles away from home. This would cover major losses. The yearly cost of the policy for the 2 of us is about $400. Medical costs and evacuation costs are the only unanticipated cruise expenses that could have a significant impact on our financial status.

 

We self insure on all other potential problem such as pre-trip cancellation, the need to return home during the trip due to external reasons, and other potential minor losses. We can easily handle these costs without a significant impact on our financial bottom line.

 

I note that many people feel that it is necessary to buy insurance just in case a family member back home dies during the cruise and they have to get home quickly. My attitude may seem callous but they are dead anyway so they can postpone the funeral a week or so and put the body on ice. There is no need to rush back. Now, in the unlikely event that a close family member had a medical emergency and we did have to leave early, that will just be a cost that we have to bear.

 

This has always worked for us. We are do not buy our insurance from the cruise companies since our policy is sort of an umbrella policy that is not offered by the cruise companies because they probably do not make enough money on it. You can generally assume that almost anything that you buy from a cruise company is over priced and under valued except for the basic cost of your cabin.

 

DON

Edited November 11, 2013 by donaldsc

[puppycanducruise]

We always buy insurance.

I'd hate it if DH's employer did something to upset our plans (we often book our cruise 6 to 9 months ahead).

A good friend's son (25, good health, worked out, ate right) went to Europe. They convinced him to get out of country health insurance - good thing, he got appendicitis in Paris. That would have cost a fortune without insurance.

You never know, I think it's worth the price.

[CruisinRoxy]

So, speaking of insurance, and the reasons for it, how does everyone deal with the worry that comes with going on a cruise? Namely, elderly parents. Going on a land-based vacation, it's relatively easy to get home in a hurry. But, a cruise? I just booked one and I seem to be fixated on worrying about a MIL in a nursing home who is 92, and 2 parents in their 80's living at home.

I mean, even if you insure your trip in case of untimely death or illness, how do you deal with the guilt? Stay home - like a little voice is telling me??

I know there are worriers out there - been on these boards long enough to know:)

[Lookingforfacts]

A simple yes or no answer won't provide useful information.

 

Does your health insurance policy offer international coverage? Does it cover medical evacuation? Repatriation? What limits?

 

If the answer is no (or not enough) you need insurance. Self insuring a potential claim of hundreds of thousands of dollars doesn't make sense.

 

If the answer is yes then the decision isn't as easy. Your credit card might cover lost luggage, It might even cover some cancellation fees. Some people might be comfortable self insuring those risks.

 

Most of the lower, and mid priced policies offer secondary medical coverage. People with adequate health coverage are paying for a illusionary benefit.