Is there a cheap travel insurance policy which is just medical with high excesses ?

billy99

My wife and I are going to Thailand for 72 days in the winter and used to use Revolut Premium which covered for 90 days trips in the past but they no longer do and the higher priced versions only cover 30 days now. The best deal I have found is K2Travel which is around £500 which I am steeling myself for but has all the other things I don't care about like cancellation etc. What would be ideal is a medical only policy with high excesses (say £5k per person) so it is only really needed if something drastic happens that I can't afford to pay for. But they don't seem to exist - is this other peoples' experience ?

cw8825

billy99 said:

My wife and I are going to Thailand for 72 days in the winter and used to use Revolut Premium which covered for 90 days trips in the past but they no longer do and the higher priced versions only cover 30 days now. The best deal I have found is K2Travel which is around £500 which I am steeling myself for but has all the other things I don't care about like cancellation etc. What would be ideal is a medical only policy with high excesses (say £5k per person) so it is only really needed if something drastic happens that I can't afford to pay for. But they don't seem to exist - is this other peoples' experience ?

I wouldn’t expect much of a saving as it’s not a mass market product 
you will need to find a broker who can get a niche policy but because demand is basically 0 they can charge whatever they want as realistically there’s no other competition 

Aretnap

ISTR that medical cover is by some distance the most expensive part of travel insurance - especially for older people. Which is why it gets so much more expensive as you get older - it's not because insurers are worried that your more likely to lose your suitcase as you get old and forgetful. 

If medical cover accounts for (say) 80% of the risk that the insurance is covering, then even on the most simplistic calculation stripping out everything else is not actually going to save you very much money. Then account for the fact that medical only cover would be a niche product not a mass market product - which means fewer economies of scale and less competition to keep prices down. So if you insisted on medical only cover your might well find that it was a product which cost more than traditional travel insurance, but provided less cover. Nobody is going to buy that, which presumably is why nobody seems to offer it.

DullGreyGuy

Aretnap said:

ISTR that medical cover is by some distance the most expensive part of travel insurance - especially for older people. Which is why it gets so much more expensive as you get older - it's not because insurers are worried that your more likely to lose your suitcase as you get old and forgetful. 

If medical cover accounts for (say) 80% of the risk that the insurance is covering, then even on the most simplistic calculation stripping out everything else is not actually going to save you very much money. Then account for the fact that medical only cover would be a niche product not a mass market product - which means fewer economies of scale and less competition to keep prices down. So if you insisted on medical only cover your might well find that it was a product which cost more than traditional travel insurance, but provided less cover. Nobody is going to buy that, which presumably is why nobody seems to offer it.

"Medical cover" depends on if you mean overseas medical treatment or including cancellation due to medical? Either way its not 80% overall but wouldn't be far off if you include both.

It's a severity -v- frequency issue. All the biggest claims will be medical based but on a claims experience basis it's offset by large volumes of low value claims for cancellations or lost luggage etc. 

billy99 said:
The best deal I have found is K2Travel which is around £500 which I am steeling myself for but has all the other things I don't care about like cancellation etc. What would be ideal is a medical only policy with high excesses (say £5k per person) so it is only really needed if something drastic happens that I can't afford to pay for. But they don't seem to exist - is this other peoples' experience ?

Insurance isn't based purely on the risk being assumed by the insurer. Costs of selling are high, costs of evaluating the risks could be very high. In practice you can deal with the 95% of consumer insurance by simplifying the whole process and selling to the masses using standard wording and digitised pricing. Going off plan in principle reduces the risk but vastly increases the cost of sale/administration. Get an underwriter, rather than a computer, to do the selling, an actuary to individually price the risk, a solicitor to draft the wording and you get a great policy but you have 1k of costs and given most quotes dont result in a sale the price will be many times that to just cover the admin costs.

Moving outside of mass market insurance is expensive, far more than the £500 you are concerned it will be. There are some however who look sideways instead. Certainly for the US there are some who will find buying short term medical insurance is better than buying Travel insurance. Note that excesses there tend not to be just a fixed cost (£5k) but instead are a percentage of claims so a 10% deductible on a $1m claim will be vastly more than $5k. 

The second consideration is its purely medical, so were you too ill to take a commercial flight you either stay in country for a longer time at your own expense or pay for your own medivac. Note it will also not cover another person to stay with you. For some it may be a better option, eg if you've terminal cancer etc, but not for the majority. 

billy99

Many thanks for the detailed and informed comments which are very helpful. Just means I will have to suck it up if I want the cover I need but good to know that is the only way forward.