Insurance, yes or no?

[cruzincurt]

I've been getting the Travelite policy. You need to review the differences between the two to see what fits you best.

[kes]

has anyone decided to buy the "cancellation insurance" offered by the cruise line? we decided not to as we believe that we should know whether we will be going 75 days before the cruise and we plan to get full travel insurance which includes cancellation due to death or serious illness of travellers or close family before then anyway.

[cruzincurt]

I would suggest only one policy, and I like the Travelex products that are primary. With two policies, they will fight who gets to pay first?

[greatam]

Just an FYI. US Air and ATA are now on the list for no coverage for financail default at most travel insurance sites. United is still on the list for financial default. I thought they got their status resolved, even though they are still in bankruptcy.

 

About 10 more tour operators/travel agencies got put on the list as recently as 11/14/2004. NO COVERAGE at all.

 

Please make sure you are booking with reputable agencies/tour operators.

 

Travelguard is not covering any strike activity for policies issued after Nov. 16, 2004. The way I read the email-26 airlines + US Air have issued intention to strike. Policies issued after the cut off date have no trip interruption/cancellation protection. 26 airlines is almost all of them. We will all be flying by the seat of our pants. Keep your fingers crossed US Air doesn't go out on strike.

[Hold]

I have to buck the trend. Have never purchased a single policy on over 20 cruises... and never need to use one. The premiums I saved can easily pay for another cruise or two should I have need to.

 

Another poster said that in 50+ cruises he had to use it once and it saved him big bucks when he had to cancel for a family emergency....well, imagine how many thousands of dollars he spent buying 50 cruise policies to save the big buck on only one cruise?

 

Now, I will not say you should not buy insurance..... insurance should be to cover LARGE losses, and risk that you cannot afford to take. If I buys you peace of mind, by all means do. :cool:

[bfair]

OMG, now I'm scared. :eek: We're going on our first cruise, and my fiance didn't want to buy the insurance....so we didn't. :( I didn't really think it would be necessary either, but reading everyone's responses to the original question is making me queasy. I know my fiance won't want to buy the insurance now that our budget is finalized. I sure hope I get lucky this time, and next time I will insist on insurance!!:o

[GoinCruisin]

I have posted this before, thought I would post it here as well... Just MHO of course :D

 

 

I think too many times people think travel insurance is just for the cost of the cruise… I think most people could handle just losing the cost of the cruise IMO. What SHOULD worry people, even healthy, young people is the medical coverage. Be sure to check your policy exclusions, as MANY health policies do not cover international travel at all or at the very least are extremely limited in the scope of coverage. So even if your insurance covers you, and say your bill is $10K, and you get lucky and they pay 60%... you will still wish you would have taken out that $50 policy. Travel Insurance provides you assistance 24 hours a day, accept collect calls for pre-certifications, claims and medivacs. Also, if you are traveling without a Visa/Passport, you may not even be allowed to be treated. Many travel ins co. will wire transfer funds to foreign hospitals so you can have instant access to coverage. I don’t know of many that travel with $10K to pay the foreign hospital, and you don’t know how many foreign hospitals accept US Health Insurance without you having to pay upfront.

 

 

Planning a medical evacuation can be a nightmare! You want someone available 24x7 to handle issues with emergency medical evacuation planning. Many emergency medical evacuations can easily exceed $100,000. Most insurance companies do not provide medical evacuation, and those that do may only cover you to the nearest hospital, which may be Tijuana… and then you still have the issues listed above. Even if you think you have the best health coverage in OUR country, it may not be so great in other countries. Most US based health plans are not set up to handle claims and emergency phone calls from around the world. HMO and PPO plans may impose severe out-of-network penalties for treatment received in another country. Medicare generally does not cover any claims incurred outside the United States.

 

 

There is just so much that can happen to even the healthiest of people, onboard on in Port. Also, accidents can happen while you are away… is your health insurance company going to pay for you to get back home? I just don’t see how ANY of these issues have ANYTHING to do with being young and healthy. I’m 33, healthy and have no issues back home (parents are 52 and very healthy), I own a business and have incredible health coverage, but it’s the unexpected I think about. Sure hope I never have to use it, but if I ever do, I’m sure I will be very thankful. Families have been known to go bankrupt covering accidents that happened overseas. For $50, I protect myself from that… well worth it to me. Just MHO.

__________________

[Z'Loth]

Or, from http://travel.state.gov/travel/mexico.html:

The Department of State strongly urges Americans to consult with their medical insurance company prior to traveling abroad to confirm whether their policy applies overseas and if it will cover emergency expenses such as a medical evacuation. U.S. medical insurance plans seldom cover health costs outside the United States unless supplemental coverage is purchased. Further, U.S. Medicare and Medicaid programs do not provide payment for medical services outside the United States. However, many travel agents and private companies offer insurance plans that will cover health care expenses incurred overseas, including emergency services such as medical evacuations.

Also, see http://travel.state.gov/travel/abroad_health.html

[shallwechat]

i have been on 8 cruises and never once purchased the insurance but it only takes one time of needing it for regrets. i am going on cruise in january and don't plan on purchasing it. i take my chances.

[cruzincurt]

Life's a gamble. Driving to work is probably the most dangerous thing I do every day. Not having car insurance is not an option since it is a law. If you own your house clear, you don't need homeowner's insurance, fire or flood insurance. You don't have to have medical insurance.

 

You buy insurance as a hedge against the downside. I buy cruise insurance, at the best rate I can find, for the potential medical risk and evacuation from a foreign country. Would I buy trip insurance if I was going to say California, no, but I think it's prudent if you are visiting somewhere like Jamaica, or Trinadad, or other foreign country. I can self insure myself for the loss of my luggage or even the cost of the cruise, it's the big medical nut that I am concerned about.

 

Well, you say, I'm young and healthy, but you can still fall down the steps just like anyone else. The balance is to not be insurance rich and cash poor.

[Bequia]

We've been on a dozen cruises and have never purchased insurance. I've been lucky and have never had a problem while cruising. Life is funny and it can change everything in the blink of an eye. So for peace of mind I purchased a travel medical policy through TravelGap Vacationer Plan, http://www.hthtravelinsurance.com/. For $59 the three of us have a $1 million dollar policy covering medical expenses and evacuation. This is a first for me and hopefully it will be a waste of money. ;)

[reldudegop]

my friend and i are driving down to florida to get on a cruise leaving from cape canaveral in march for spring break. we'll be driving the whole way and get there a day early. do we really still need insurance? we're 2 college kids who can battle anything...i think???

help?

thanks

[bUU]

The main reason that we purchase cruise insurance is the cost of a medical evacation, if necessary. Fall down a stairwell on-board; have an injury in the health club; etc.; even having something unfortunate on a port excursion could result in tens of thousands of dollars in expense, totally the passenger's financial responsibility.

[GoinCruisin]

my friend and i are driving down to florida to get on a cruise leaving from cape canaveral in march for spring break. we'll be driving the whole way and get there a day early. do we really still need insurance? we're 2 college kids who can battle anything...i think???

help?

thanks

If you are 2 college kids, then definitely!! What if something happens in port, or on the ship... can you afford the cost for medical evacuation? Depending on where you are and where you are going that could be upwards of $100K... but if you can afford that ;) don't bother with the insurance, LOL... look at my post above. Many people think nothing can happen to them, but you will be in another country, you just never know. I could care less about losing the cost of my cruise, it's the other aspects that frighten me into spending the $40 on insurance...

[bUU]

I know you meant it as a joke, but that part about, "If you can afford it..." should be taken literally and seriously. Don't pay for insurance for things that you can afford to pay yourself: "self-insure" in those cases. Insurance really just protects you from catastrophes (things that few people, if any, will encounter) and cash-flow problems (whereby you don't have enough cash-on-hand at a particular time to pay for something you could insure instead). The money to pay for whatever you insure has to come from somewhere, eventually, and over the course of a lifetime, on the average, you'll end up spending more money on insurance than you would have spent on whatever was insured for you. Having said that, very few people are rich-enough to qualify as capable of handling these specific (cruise-related) scenarios through self-insurance! :) However, I don't, for example, take extended service contracts on electronic equipment.

[cruzincurt]

Bicker, I generally agree, especially with the extended warranties. Why pay $100 for a warranty for something you can replace for $300? Same with credit life insurance, if I die, that outstanding balance on my credit card or car loan is no longer my problem. By the same logic, if you add up all of your costs per year for home and car insurance, you would probably have been better putting the money in the bank, assuming you didn't have any claims. That's the nature of insurance, their gamble that you won't need it.

Same thing with health insurance these days, due to rising costs, we are forced to take higher deductibles (self insurance) to keep the costs down. So insurance is rapidly becoming "catastropic" event insurance.

I look to travel insurance only for the emergency medical evacuation. I'm not worried about recovering $200 for my old clothes. I don't want to be stuck in a hospital in some foreign country.

As to the two college students, your drive to the ship is the most risky part of your trip.

[ceejay_San Angelo]

Two years ago, in Brazil I fell off a porch and broke my leg - double compound fracture (that means both bones were sticking out through the skin). BUMMER!!! I did NOT want to have surgery in Brazil. My $20 group insurance policy paid for a $40K medical evacuation back to my hometown.

I'm a generally healthy and active person, but I always buy insurance if I'm going to someplace that I don't feel comfortable about their medical care.

[AZPam]

Thankfully, nothing has ever happend to us personally. (Knock on wood!) Unfortunately, bad things have happened to others in our group we have cruised with.

5 years ago on our first cruise, one in our group fell on board and broke her hip. Luckily for her, she had the insurance. She was air lifted from Isle Margarita to Miami with her daughter, all surgery and hospital stay, plus hotel for the daughter were covered. They also did a medical plane back to Phoenix, 2 weeks in rehab, the works and everything was covered! I never did hear how much the total bill was, but I am sure it wasn't cheap!

2 years ago my parents were returning from a Europe cruise and they had everything stolen out of their bags when they went thru customs in NY. The insurance covered some, but there were more lessons learned. Make sure the insurance is in "first position" so that you don't have to file with your homeowners insurance first.

Last year, for our spring break cruise, one in our group fell and broke her leg the day before departure. They didn't have the insurance and the entire cost of the trip and airfare was lost. They are mad at the cruise line which I don't really think is very fair, since they had the opportunity to buy the insurance just like the rest of us.

You never know when something might happen, so the cost of the policy is well worth it in our book!

[momofmeg]

We used to never buy insurance. We hated the idea of adding another $100 per person for insurance and so we chanced it.

Then a couple of years ago my father-inlaw died suddenly from a stroke. Hubby and I had a trip planned which we had to cancel-it was not a cruise so we were just had to get back our deposit from a bed and breakfast inn but they were very understanding and refunded it without a problem.

Then last year hubby had to get his gall bladder out - suddenly no warning- and you guessed it-we again had planned a trip that weekend in the NC mountains-so not only was it a deposit for the bed and breakfast inn but also a refund for our train tickets for the Great Smoky Mounatain railway siteseeing train ride we were to take. The bed and breakfast refunded it without a problem-the train company did ask for a documentation from his Doctor but they too refunded it.

Anyway we decided the smart thing to do is get insurance with cruises-since twice we have had to cancel a trip last minute. We booked our cruise next year through a company called Anchors Away and they gave us insurance through a company called I Cruise Insured for only $40 a person. We decided that $40 was the worth the peace of mind. Also that insurance covered lay-offs or being fired from employment which I had never even heard of before-and since hubby works in the airline industry and things are so "iffy" now that cinched it. Otherwise we would have been afraid to book a cruise a year away.

[momofmeg]

[quote name='cruzincurt']Bicker, I generally agree, especially with the extended warranties. Why pay $100 for a warranty for something you can replace for $300? Same with credit life insurance, if I die, that outstanding balance on my credit card or car loan is no longer my problem. By the same logic, if you add up all of your costs per year for home and car insurance, you would probably have been better putting the money in the bank, assuming you didn't have any claims. That's the nature of insurance, their gamble that you won't need it.

Same thing with health insurance these days, due to rising costs, we are forced to take higher deductibles (self insurance) to keep the costs down. So insurance is rapidly becoming "catastropic" event insurance.

I look to travel insurance only for the emergency medical evacuation. I'm not worried about recovering $200 for my old clothes. I don't want to be stuck in a hospital in some foreign country.

As to the two college students, your drive to the ship is the most risky part of your trip.[/QUOTE]


That is the way my sister's father inlaw always was. He felt it was a "gamble" either way. He was pretty well off and his home was paid for-so he could choose not to have insurance on his home.

He did one stupid thing-bought mys sister's young brother inlaw who at the time was only sixteen a brand new trans am (this was like 30 or more years ago) and only put liabiltiy on it as the car was paid for in cash. Well You Guessed IT the boy wrecked and totaled that car within like 3 months of his father buying that for him.

[ladycaveat]

Has anyone ever signed up for Carnival's insurance? There are so many insurance companys . . . I've always used the one offered by the cruise line. After reading all these posts, I'm more confused now than I was before. Help!

[Bagrol]

As one who is ready to retire from the insurance business, I must thank everyone for helping to fund my retirement. Travel insurance is one of the most profitable lines of insurance for insurance companies. I personally would recommend you self insure if you can afford it and not pay the premiums. For the people who had to file claims they were the lucky (unlucky) ones. Normally claim service should be excellent since it is such a high margin line of business. If you pay 5-10 percent of your cruise for insurance it is way too high. That is a one in twenty to one in ten chance of disaster. The odds are much less than that that disaster will occur. However, if it does give you the peace of mind go ahead - thank you again.

[charleyb]

Hello all. Let me tell you a story that hapened to us in the spring of 2003. We had cruised three times previous to this and have cruised twice since then. Before this date in 2003 we never purchased insurance but now we do. We were flying out of Dayton, Ohio early on a Saturday of the day the cruise began. We had bought flights through Delta much cheaper than RCCL sold them. Our flight never got off the ground due to lightning striking a plane coming from Grand Rapids and as it was getting later in the morning we finally heard the words that there was no way we could get to Miami by 4 PM. Our orignal flight was for a 7 AM departure through Cincinnati and arriving in Miami before noon. I got this great idea to see if we could divert our flight to Nassau which was our port of call for Sunday morning and pick up the ship there. Well in our group there were 10 of us and would you believe the luck...we could get to Nassau and Delta had enough seats and charged us nothing to change. We then stayed the night in Nassau at our expense and boarded early Sunday morning on the cruise ship. All of our bags were delayed and all except two bags showed up before we actually left Nassau. For those two bags that were never found, the folks got some money from Delta. Now the moral of the story and to the point. Some in our group had insurance and the hotel in Nassau was covered by the insurance and they also got funds for food and to purchase clothing since their bags were delayed over eight hours and the one of the two that lost a bag also got reimbursement from the insurance. We that did not have the insurance paid the hotel prices on the beach for one night in Nassau. Also a tip of the hat to RCCL because they had a taxi pick us up at the Nassau airport that took us to the hotel of our choice at no charge and they were very organized in insuring that we could embark in Nassau. A great experience.

[momofmeg]

[quote name='Hold']I have to buck the trend. Have never purchased a single policy on over 20 cruises... and never need to use one. The premiums I saved can easily pay for another cruise or two should I have need to.

Another poster said that in 50+ cruises he had to use it once and it saved him big bucks when he had to cancel for a family emergency....well, imagine how many thousands of dollars he spent buying 50 cruise policies to save the big buck on only one cruise?

Now, I will not say you should not buy insurance..... insurance should be to cover LARGE losses, and risk that you cannot afford to take. If I buys you peace of mind, by all means do. :cool:[/QUOTE]


You are one of those guys that believe it is a gamble either way. Read my other posts. Hubby had a gallbladder attack and we had to cancel a weekend trip. Now we got out money back and it was only around $350 which was a loss we could have taken-no big deal. Now this was 6 weeks before we took our Inspiration cruise. what worried me was- what if his gall bladder did not act up until 6 weeks later when we were on our cruise- which very well could have happened with all that rich food we eat on a cruise that we don't normally eat. $30,000 fro a air lift is the going cost from what I understand for an emergency and and as we have a HMO for health insurance it would not have covered a penny.

That is what I am concerned about-not the $2,500 we would lose if we did not get to take our cruise next year but the possible $30,000 we could lose. Hubby and I are well into middle age now and so we have to realize the things could happen. He has had 2 surgeries in the last 5 years and I have diabetes. This is our fear-who wants a debt like that hanging over their head when retirement is within the next 15 to 20 years? We would never get that paid off- we would be working until our 80's I guess. So the $40 per person policy is well worth the cost I say. $40 a person is not going to keep me from cruising but a $30,000 bill would keep me from doing a lot more then future cruises to pay a thing like that off.

[Z'Loth]

I think somebody earlier equated cruise insurance with those "extended warranties" sold by those stores. First off, if the store didn't believe in the quality of a product, they shouldn't be selling it in the first place. Secondly, it is often used to pad the profits. My response is usually "No, thank you."

However, cruise insurance is sold by several companies, not just the cruise line. My mother and I have different health insurance policies. I'm less worried about cancelling out my trip (my boss has known [i]since May[/i] that I'm going on vacation), and more worried about taking a rough and tumble fall and being medically evacuated out. I don't know the quality of the medical facilities of Alcapulco, Manzanita, and Ixpata in comparison to the US equivelents.