Travel insurance question - pre-existing conditions

Quentin

Difficult to offer any advice without knowing the condition.

If its something that has a national organisation for it, then check their website and see if they have any insurance advice/recommendations.

Incapuppy

All I can advise you to do is to shop around, insurers (or rather their medical screening agencies) will often view various conditions differently. Myself and OH have several PEMCs between us including cancer and heart related and I have never been unable to find cover.

The only condition that I am personally aware of (having read other peoples' posts) where some insurers (I have no idea whether it is a blanket policy throughout the industry) refuse to cover at all falls under the general umbrella of depression. It is perfectly possible to travel excluding this (or any other condition) though providing you understand fully any risks involved.

Lady_K

I just called flexicover and spoke to the pre existing conditions advisor who asked some questions then told us to go through a different name for the condition as the follow on questions from that would put it right, it seems to have done but the quotes seem fairly high at £67 for 10 days in europe, is that high?

Would anyone recommend a good insurer? not just low price but more importantly an insurer that makes any claims needed especially in a foriegn country a little less stressful. The last time she went away and had to claim it was so difficult and stressful and was a fighting battle from this end to get the insurers to get thier act together

Incapuppy

Lady_K wrote: »

the quotes seem fairly high at £67 for 10 days in europe, is that high?

It depends entirely on your perspective and I can personally confirm that it does pay to shop around.

A couple of years back I needed jiont cover for a fortnight in Sri Lanka and the quotes varied from £200 to £1200. That second figure is not a typing error!

luci

If it is a stable condition which hasn't changed in the past 12 months, including no change in medication, then it might be worth trying the company mentioned above https://www.eta.co.uk I have called them with a number of questions and everything I asked about was covered, including the ash cloud.

ian41

An update on my post #24.

Despite being endorsed by Which as a best buy, in my view the true test of any TI policy is (a) how much it costs (b) the admin procedure and (c) how simple and efficient is the claims policy as it often handles policies sold by many companies.

Having discovered ETA's novel approach (to me at least) of evaluating PEMCs, I felt that I should report back. For the first time ever, I had cause to organise medical treatment in California last month.

On my return, I downloaded the necessary claim forms, completed them and mailed them on Saturday 27 August - the Bank Holiday weekend. As July/August is the busiest travel period, I was expecting a wait of a few weeks before acknowledgement and the inevitable queries (it took 6 weeks for my previous TI to even contact me on a small cancellation claim).

The good news for my family (and others in the future) is that today (the 7th working day after the earliest day of receipt by them) I received an email acknowledging my claim and informing me that it had been paid in full (less the £25 excess for Annual TI) direct to my bank account!

So I am pleased to say that I have been very impressed by ETA. I hope that this is their usual standard and can now recommend it to others with stable PEMCs.