travel insurance query .

alfmurph

My wife and i are both in our sixties .
For many years we bought world wide annual travel insurance including united states through her work at minimal cost .
We both retired early 2020 and had to buy this insurance , Bit of a shock at the quotes but we opted for the cheapest at travel saver insurance . There were a few bad reviews about them but we went ahead . Of course with all travel banned we never found out if they were good or bad .
We paid £108 for the joint policy but were charged an extra £80 for my high blood pressure and £50 for my wife having crohn's disease .
We have both been on pills for these for over ten years with no ill effects . Touch wood .
My question is now that the time has come to renew in april if we went somewhere else do insurance companies share information and would they know if we did not declare the illnesses to save money .
Another problem would be we booked dubai for april 2020 but this was moved to march 2021 and that is probably going to have to be moved again taking us out of the annual policy date we have with our insurance company .
Maybe we should just stay with this company .

sheramber

Risky. You would need to get a policy that did not provide medical cover but then you would not be able to claim for anything medical. If you took out a normal policy without declaring them and made a claim the insurance company would contact your Gp for a medical history so would find out and most likely void the policy. 

elsien

alfmurph said:

 .
We have both been on pills for these for over ten years with no ill effects . Touch wood .
My question is now that the time has come to renew in april if we went somewhere else do insurance companies share information and would they know if we did not declare the illnesses to save money .

When you take out travel insurance, you are asked specific questions about medical conditions and are asked to confirm that the information you have given is correct. Any claim based on information that you chose not to share would be a fraudulent claim.
If you needed medical assistance while abroad, the insurer would check your medical history. Not just for the condition itself but from any claims that could be related to it.  You do not want to have cover declined if you are in  a hospital somewhere abroad needing repatriation, because they have discovered you lied on the application. 
It is a false economy when a bill could potentially run into tens of thousands. I had a relative who was taken unexpectedly ill on a cruise. He had to be airlifted off the cruise ship, spent weeks in intensive care in a Portuguese hospital then had to return home on a medical flight. Plus the additional costs of the accommodation for his wife to stay near the hospital and her additional flight home as well. 

Sandtree

Intentionally not declaring a medical condition would be fraud and not only could invalidate any claim you made but may result in the policy being voided and you having to declare that for the rest of your life to all classes of insurance that you buy.

When you declare a medical condition there are really four possible outcomes:
1) We will cover it for free
2) We will cover it for £X
3) We will exclude it 
4) We will not sell you a policy

If something goes down path 3 or 4 depends on the insurer/intermediary more than the actual condition. For path 2 some insurers will allow you to decline to pay the extra but instead have it treated as an excluded condition.

You may decide this is an acceptable risk, and its certainly a much lower risk than your idea of committing fraud. Obviously no medical expert here but exclusion of high blood pressure is likely to cover more issues than your wife's condition, a heart attack for example could well be excluded given its a notable risk if you have high BP