Emergency evacuation coverage

[mrs. jones]

We always purchase insurance and the most important piece to us is the emergency evacuation coverage. I always go for the higher amounts but often this is secondary. Do any of you have stories to share about claims of this nature and whether it is better to get primary coverage at a higher premium to maximize the chance of getting a payment if needed? Thank you!

[cruiseco]

We always purchase insurance and the most important piece to us is the emergency evacuation coverage. I always go for the higher amounts but often this is secondary. Do any of you have stories to share about claims of this nature and whether it is better to get primary coverage at a higher premium to maximize the chance of getting a payment if needed? Thank you!

 

I know of no major third-party plan where the emergency evacuation coverage is secondary. If fact, it's the only coverage where you don't have to pre-pay for the service and wait to get reimbursed. No claims involved.

[mrs. jones]

While checking this morning the majority of the companies on Insure My Trip.co had it as secondary. A much higher premium gets you primary coverage.

[cruiseco]

I partially take back my original post. Say you're on a South America cruise and are taken off the ship for a suspected heart attack. After the local hospital gets you stabilized you need to be transported back home on an air ambulance at a cost of $75K

 

Here's the plan wording from one of these secondary plans:

 

"Emergency Medical Evacuation/Repatriation

 

"Covered Expenses" means Reasonable Expenses for medical services required for evacuation to the nearest adequate medical facility from the place where the Injury or Emergency Illness occurred. Services and benefits will be arranged only if the treating Physician recommends such evacuation. Covered Expenses will be paid provided You are traveling on a Covered Trip and are more than 120 miles away from Your primary place of residence. In addition to the above Covered Expenses, when You are confined in a medical facility more than 120 miles from Your primary residence and Your treating Physician and We determine it is feasible and medically Necessary to transfer You to a medical facility nearer to Your primary residence to recuperate in familiar surroundings, medical repatriation will be provided. We will not pay for any services or Covered Expenses incurred without Our prior consent or approval."

 

So if you follow all of the above the insurer will make all of your arrangements and will pay the service provider directly -- you don't have to pay a nickel of the $75K up front and there will be no claim to file later.

 

But what if you ignore all of this and make your own arrangements and put the $75K on a credit card without consulting the insurer first? According to that last sentence they don't have to pay you anything as reimbursement. But if they're feeling generous they might decide to consider paying part of the cost of the evacuation but only if you exhaust all of your other possible sources of reimbursement first -- your regular health insurance might cover part of it, some credit cards have this coverage, etc. Whatever they don't pay the travel insurer MIGHT pay. That makes them secondary.

 

So, yes, these insurers can be secondary if you pay the cost of the evacuation yourself (putting yourself at risk of getting no reimbursement) and having no other source of coverage. Don't do that.

[sirwired]

Making a policy "primary" is a feature that I suppose is ok, but it's never anything I'd pay a dime extra for. At worst, a "secondary" policy adds a couple of weeks to your claim while you wait for your primary insurance to deny your claim (or pay it, I suppose... it's all the same to you where the check comes from.)

[mrs. jones]

thank you both for contributing. I ended up buying from Seven Corners which has secondary coverage. My concern was being denied due to the interpretation of terms which we ran into on our last cruise. Left a day early due to an Italian transportation strike which impacted departure. Coverage was denied (trip interruption, not emergency evacuation) despite documentation from the cruiseline. Guess this is always a risk but wondered if getting primary coverage would minimize the red tape and ensuing shananegans!

[Kellie Poodle]

I don't care what the policy says about medical evacuation. Don't believe that it will happen.

 

We were in a situation that required it and our company, Travel Guard, with whom we had primary one-million dollar coverage did everything in its power to avoid paying for the evacuation.

 

Though their failure did endanger the health of my DH, we managed to get him home safely but not without a huge amount of fighting and the help of the Royal Caribbean staff back in Miami. They never did the evacuation. We had to wait until he was finally able to fly commercially. Then the airline they had booked went on strike and they tried to keep us in Sicily indefinitely until the air line thing resolved. Though my hotel benefits were about to run out, they refused to extend them until they resolved the airline stuff. I am so thankful for the intercession and assistance by the RCI staff that finally got us home. Without the cruise line personnel, who knows what would have happened.

 

DH is a diabetic who uses an insulin pump. His hospitalization ws due to something else, but the hospital in Sicily had never seen one and made him remove the pump and proceeded to treat his diabetes incorrectly. He had to sneak on his pump and administer the proper doses of insulin as the hospital treatment would have caused him harm. The insurance company was made aware of this by myself and by the port agent assigned to me by the ship.

 

In these situations, you are at the mercy of the insurance company. In our case the "medical expert" making the decisions was a paramedic.

Travel Guard would not honor the contractual provision to have a translator between the treating physician and our personal physician, even though the personal physician contacted them and insisted that the treating physician needed information about DH's health to properly treat him. Their answer to this was that the treating physician had to ask for the conference and, of course, no one ever told him that he could. I had to speak to the personal physician, write down the information, get on my computer and use Babelfish to translate the information then pass it along to the port agent who then passed it to the doctor.

 

 

I now cover my DH with a separate policy from MedJet Assist. At least with them, if the treating physician and the home primary physician agree that the patient needs to be in a hospital at home, it's done. The doctors are allowed to talk to each other.

The decision is made by doctors, not paramedics on the insurance company payroll.

 

Insurance companies are not in business to pay claims. They are in business to make money for their shareholders. Your premiums pay the administrative costs of operating the business. What pays the claims is their investments. When the market is not doing so well, they will do all they can to protect their bottom line, the policy holder be damned.

 

I hope that this story can save another family from going through the horrors of what we went through. I will never place myself in the position of totally relying on one insurance company again.

[sail7seas]

We have written MedJet Assist policies for years. No matter what other insurance I buy for medical/evacuation/repatriation coverage, I always want MedJet redundancy as I feel they will provide the best chance of our getting to the hospital of our choice/home over and above all the other coverages.

 

Friends of ours have made claims and were treated the way we all wish to be treated.

[Kellie Poodle]

We have written MedJet Assist policies for years. No matter what other insurance I buy for medical/evacuation/repatriation coverage, I always want MedJet redundancy as I feel they will provide the best chance of our getting to the hospital of our choice/home over and above all the other coverages.

 

Friends of ours have made claims and were treated the way we all wish to be treated.

 

 

I learned my lesson well and now we always have a MedJet Assist policy over and above regular travel insurance.