Travel Insurance for Elderly

Be_Happy

Having arranged a holiday, I had to go through the usual search for a company to provide travel insurance for OH aged 76. Quotes varied widely, but was able to get very reasonable insurance through https://www.staysure.co.uk much cheaper than the 'specialist' elderly companies.

Thought this info might be useful.

Be_Happy

Seems I could have got a 15% discount off this if I'd gone to Staysure through Quidco.

I'll know next time.

excited

We found the cheapest to be the postoffice my MIL is 79. Two weeks in egypt £74.00



df

Be_Happy

Just shows how companies differ for each individual circumstances, and value of shopping around. To see how Post Office compared with Staysure I got similar quote from Post Office - they wanted £76, compared to Staysure £37 for us. However comparing to your 2 weeks in Egypt, Staysure was much more expensive.

Update: Sorry darrenforward, just rechecked and found that Egypt is included in Europe section, so Staysure would only charge £43.63 for 2 weeks in Egypt for a person aged 66-70, of course you have to compare what is included in policies.

Jake'sGran

Be_Happy wrote:

Having arranged a holiday, I had to go through the usual search for a company to provide travel insurance for OH aged 76. Quotes varied widely, but was able to get very reasonable insurance through https://www.staysure.co.uk much cheaper than the 'specialist' elderly companies.

Thought this info might be useful.

This is one of my favourite subjects since I spent hours on the phone last September looking for the right insurance for either a two week holiday in Spain or an annual policy for same. The year before I had been really pleased to get full cover (I have a pacemaker and mechanical heart valve) for the both of us for a year with Help the Aged for about £125. In April last year, the anniversary date of the policy they were sending me letters asking if I would like to renew but as we were not planning to go again until Oct I thought there was no point. Come Sept they would no longer cover for me and my heart. Annual policy was even cheaper but I felt I needed to have full cover. The quotes varied between £500 and £250 annual. Saga wanted about £120 for single trip but I had to pay first £1000. In the end I settled for Bradford & Bingley single trip £76 (for both of us) which was the best. They would cover my valve but like everyone else no cover for pacemaker (which I think is strange). In future I am going to rely on my EU health card as it provides emergency health cover and have insurance for the other standard things. When a friend's husband died in Majorca I wanted to ask who paid for repatriation (but didn't of course) as they went with Thomsons and didn't mention he'd had a heart attack. She said they didn't ask but we all know how expensive their insurance is.

If we go again I will get a quote from Staysure - should be interesting.

Savvy_Sue

Jake'sGran wrote:

They would cover my valve but like everyone else no cover for pacemaker (which I think is strange). In future I am going to rely on my EU health card as it provides emergency health cover and have insurance for the other standard things. When a friend's husband died in Majorca I wanted to ask who paid for repatriation (but didn't of course) as they went with Thomsons and didn't mention he'd had a heart attack. She said they didn't ask but we all know how expensive their insurance is.

I know he's not over 50 and he doesn't have any health problems, but even when DS1 goes to France to stay with friends I take out extra insurance for him on the 'what if he fell under a bus' principle! He's not likely to need the boring day to day part of the insurance, but I do like to know that we won't have to worry about the costs of anything dreadful happening.

Maybe pacemakers aren't covered because they have a clear anticipated life, so rarely go wrong, but if they did, it would cost a lot to fix them in a hurry?

BTW, it's worth saying that if you have health conditions for which it's extremely unlikely you'd need emergency attention, you can opt to have them excluded. Sometimes the insurance company will decline to cover certain things anyway, and you have to weigh up how likely it is that whatever's excluded will require attention. Note that this is different to not declaring a problem - I also know someone who didn't declare heart problems before going abroad, and lived to regret it!

But my specific example is that between being diagnosed with a benign brain tumour and having it removed, I declared it but said I didn't want it covered. The thing was, I was in otherwise good health, the problems which had led to its discovery had a) settled down and b) were thought to be unrelated (!), and there was nothing to be done for it except remove it, which certainly wasn't going to happen on holiday!

Labman_2

Savvy_Sue wrote:

I also know someone who didn't declare heart problems before going abroad, and lived to regret it!

That's a relief!