Travel insurance health condition - 2 policies?

spannerzone

Hi, my wife and I are travelling to the US in May and she had a heart attack 8 years ago so we need medical insurance to cover her (she's 68 and I'm 55 and I have no health issues), Saga seems the cheapest.at £450 for 2 weeks cover as a joint policy ....but if I do 1 SAGA policy for her it's £320 and another SAGA policy for just me, it's £80 just for me - so two policies works out cheaper in total.

Are there any issues doing this?

We're flying to stay with family so this doesn't need to cover anything except medical (I don't care about cancelled flights/hotels etc as I'm willing to risk that to get the insurance as low as possible).

SAGA seems cheapest by several hundred pounds vs most others (We've previously used Avanti who were cheaper 2 years ago)

Appreciate any thoughts or experience on this.

sheramber

You need to check exactly what cover each policy gives.

e.g. if your wife required hospitalisation , on a joint policy Saga would cover you for extending your stay and flying home on a different flight to that booked.

If the hospital was in a different city etc they would probably cover your expenses to stay close to her 

On single policies they might not do that.

The same applies if you were unable to fly home on the booked flight and you wife wanted to extend her stay.

For £50 is it worth it?

spannerzone

sheramber said:

You need to check exactly what cover each policy gives.

e.g. if your wife required hospitalisation , on a joint policy Saga would cover you for extending your stay and flying home on a different flight to that booked.

If the hospital was in a different city etc they would probably cover your expenses to stay close to her 

On single policies they might not do that.

The same applies if you were unable to fly home on the booked flight and you wife wanted to extend her stay.

For £50 is it worth it?

Thank you, that all makes perfect sense and very useful indeed, I thought of a few possible risks and you've helped a lot, thanks.

DullGreyGuy

sheramber said:

You need to check exactly what cover each policy gives.

e.g. if your wife required hospitalisation , on a joint policy Saga would cover you for extending your stay and flying home on a different flight to that booked.

If the hospital was in a different city etc they would probably cover your expenses to stay close to her 

On single policies they might not do that.

The same applies if you were unable to fly home on the booked flight and you wife wanted to extend her stay.

For £50 is it worth it?

Haven't checked Saga's insurance policy but the above is not going to be an issue on the majority of policies. Her policy is likely to include cover for someone either to stay with her or to go out to join her therefore having split policies won't be a problem as her policy covers you. 

The main problem with most policies, again there are exceptions and haven't checked the Saga wording, is that you cannot declare conditions that close relatives that arent covered by your policy. So were your wife to be ill related to her heart condition then your insurance is unlikely to respond... so if it happened before you travelled or whilst away but wasnt serious enough to require her to be hospitalised etc then your policy is unlikely to respond so would you have the holiday without her? 

spannerzone

DullGreyGuy said:

sheramber said:

You need to check exactly what cover each policy gives.

e.g. if your wife required hospitalisation , on a joint policy Saga would cover you for extending your stay and flying home on a different flight to that booked.

If the hospital was in a different city etc they would probably cover your expenses to stay close to her 

On single policies they might not do that.

The same applies if you were unable to fly home on the booked flight and you wife wanted to extend her stay.

For £50 is it worth it?

Haven't checked Saga's insurance policy but the above is not going to be an issue on the majority of policies. Her policy is likely to include cover for someone either to stay with her or to go out to join her therefore having split policies won't be a problem as her policy covers you. 

The main problem with most policies, again there are exceptions and haven't checked the Saga wording, is that you cannot declare conditions that close relatives that arent covered by your policy. So were your wife to be ill related to her heart condition then your insurance is unlikely to respond... so if it happened before you travelled or whilst away but wasnt serious enough to require her to be hospitalised etc then your policy is unlikely to respond so would you have the holiday without her? 

Hi and thanks for the reply, I think you make valid points and will take that on board (and read the policy docs) but I now feel the relatively small saving might be a real pain should something nasty occur during the trip.

sheramber

DullGreyGuy said:

sheramber said:

You need to check exactly what cover each policy gives.

e.g. if your wife required hospitalisation , on a joint policy Saga would cover you for extending your stay and flying home on a different flight to that booked.

If the hospital was in a different city etc they would probably cover your expenses to stay close to her 

On single policies they might not do that.

The same applies if you were unable to fly home on the booked flight and you wife wanted to extend her stay.

For £50 is it worth it?

Haven't checked Saga's insurance policy but the above is not going to be an issue on the majority of policies. Her policy is likely to include cover for someone either to stay with her or to go out to join her therefore having split policies won't be a problem as her policy covers you. 

The main problem with most policies, again there are exceptions and haven't checked the Saga wording, is that you cannot declare conditions that close relatives that arent covered by your policy. So were your wife to be ill related to her heart condition then your insurance is unlikely to respond... so if it happened before you travelled or whilst away but wasnt serious enough to require her to be hospitalised etc then your policy is unlikely to respond so would you have the holiday without her? 

Her policy is likely to include cover for someone either to stay with her or to go out to join her

Hence the advice to check the policy document carefully to  be sure that the cover is what you require. 

DullGreyGuy

sheramber said:
Hence the advice to check the policy document carefully to  be sure that the cover is what you require. 

10,00% agree, we can talk about generalities till the cows come home. Some of us can talk about generalities in different countries. What ultimately matters is your wording not generalities. 

spannerzone said:
I now feel the relatively small saving might be a real pain should something nasty occur during the trip.

I had an interesting conversation with the Chief Marketing Officer of a well known brand many years ago. They were a diverse company offering many things, in most areas they were known for being very customer centric and putting customers before profits (within reason). 

They had been on Confused.com and equivalent for 18 months at the time and were genuinely surprised that the average customer would switch from them to anyone else to save less than £1 per year and the vast majority to save £3 per year even when the competitor was an offshore unknown company. 

Welcome to the mass market distress purchase of a highly commoditised product. The vast majority buy on price alone and many know this so will cut everything to the bone or beyond to lower the price a few pence. 

Lorian

Given the costs involved even though I like to save money I'd go for the single policy, always assuming you have shopped around. I recently shopped around for a policy for someone with pre existing conditions and virgin money were the cheapest but that's not a recommendation as I've no experience of claiming