New Travel Insurance discussion area

krishna

minxy118 wrote: »

Hi, hoping there is someone out there who can help me with finding a reputable/reasonably priced travel insurance to cover my condition Parkinsons?

My husband (56) and I (57) have a trip to Chile, Argentina and Brazil booked for next April 2009. No hazardous activities! My husband is fit and well so only my condition, stable, regular check ups/medication and still pretty well benign after 10 years.

Just booked annual cover for the whole family with citybond (http://www.citybond.co.uk). Came out cheaper than anyone else. Was recommended on National Kidney Federation website as having very good premiums. Was actually cheaper than many single trip policies I tried.

codger

My wife and have a joint annual multi-trip policy (Europe) with Flexicover. We have no pre-existing medical conditions and we've been fortunate enough never to have had to make a claim of any kind on any travel insurance throughout 35 years of gadding about.

Our current policy expires in a month's time and Flexicover has emailed us a 'loyalty' offer of 15% discount on its premiums. "Elite" includes £2ksworth of baggage cover, 50 days single trip duration, and 17 days winter sports. The discounted price is £43.00 for the two of us, which I'm certainly not complaining about. But. . . we don't do any single trips of more than 30 days, don't do winter sports, and certainly don't lug around in our baggage anything like £2ksworth of possessions.

We've gone back to moneysupermarket.com because they're actually pretty good on travel insurance deals (especially with Flexicover's moneysupermarket-only products.)

However. . . My eyes really are glazing over, not with the headline stats relating to Medical Expenses, Personal Liabililty Cover, Cancellation Cover and Baggage Cover, but with. . .

Excesses.

We don't have ANY excesses on our buildings or contents insurance policy (thanks, Tesco: best value £120 around, methinks) other than a compulsory excess in the event of building settlement.

But I can't seem to find any travel insurer which offers similar options in terms of no excess / user choice of excess level, apart from "Moneysupermarket / Europ Assistance Excess Waiver", which costs £92, but which has for some time now been suffering from a "broken link" on the moneysupermarket website so that's that.

Nor can I find any consistency in excesses where different travel insurance policies are concerned -- some are plain daft: one offers £200 cover for remedial treatment of dentures (damaged / broken, not lost) but has a £150 excess. Thank God we don't have false teeth then.

There's surely little point in paying out, say, £50 for a superficially attractive policy which may then cost £100s in excess charges in the event of a claim, when you might have paid a bit more for a policy which wasn't going to cost you an arm and a leg in excess charges if you should, er, break an arm, or a leg.

(All this talk of £ms for "emergency medical aid" is fine until you realise that £75 or £100 is going to have to be forked out because you came down with a flu bug on holiday and had to see a local doctor who'll likely want less than £100 anyway.)

Seeing as we're unable to make any headway on moneysupermarket because of the broken link to the EuropAssistance "excess waiver" policy, does anyone here have, or know of, any other annual multi-trip travel insurance policy which is either "zero excess", or offers excess charges -- across all clauses -- that don't exceed, say, £50???



Thanks.

luci

www.travelplandirect.com you can pay extra for excess waiver.

hss

:jTO CODGER. Try 'fit-2-travel', I recently used them for a 2week trip to Europe including my 86yr old mum, paid a bit extra for the nil excess waiver, but their quote was much cheaper than others. They are connected to 'GO'. So give them a call, see my previous comments a few pages behind with the phone numbers. BEST always to speak to the person so you know what you are getting.....Good luck:o

hss

MISS BAILEY....Contact 'fit-2-travel'-. They cover UPTO 90YEARS OLD. I have just used them for a 2week trip to Europe with my mum who is 86 and has pre-existing medical conditions. BUT PLEASE speak to them because you need to make sure everything is covered, their quote was cheaper than SAGA who also go upto any age as long as the first person is 50 or over. Plus they would do an excess waiver but SAGA wouldn't. Good luck....(ps I don't work for this company, have nothing to do with ins., but just shopped around)...:rolleyes:

koru

Martin's article makes some comparisons that reflect poorly on the Post Office:

"Annual worldwide family cover is cheaper, but there are huge variances in price (and cover levels) even here; while the Post Office charges £126 (£140 offline), Flexicover via MoneySupermarket is just £40."

However, for many people, the comparison is much closer or the Post Office may even be cheaper. For instance, European cover, including winter sports, for a family of 4 with Flexicover is £47. With Post Office, it is £85.

HOWEVER, with Post Office, you get scheduled airline failure cover. To buy this separately from https://www.supplierfailurecover.com would cost 4x8=£32 for a family of four. (This cover is more generous than Post Office, but it is the closest comparison I can find.) So, if you want protection for airlines going bust, Flexicover goes up to £79. The difference is £6.

PLUS, more importantly, take a really close look at the wording on Pre-Existing Medical Conditions. Flexicover's wording is much more likely to mean you are not covered. To take just one example, they count "Raised Cholesterol" as a pre-existing medical condition, but PO only exclude "heart problems", and high cholesterol is not a heart problem (though it might lead to one). Note that it makes no difference if you have brought your cholesterol down with diet or statins: the question is whether you have "ever" had raised cholesterol. From what I understand, about half of all UK adults have cholesterol that is higher than it should be, so they would not be covered for any claim that they make if Flexicover can link the claim with having high cholesterol.

Of course, you could phone their medical screening line and see if they will cover your cholesterol. But I bet that most people don't. I might be wrong, but I am guessing it would cost more than £6 extra. Plus, have a good think about anything else that might be caught. Unless you are (and have been) quite unusually healthy, there is going to be a lot that is not covered.

ALSO, how many people (family, friends, colleagues) are there who are not going with you on holiday, but if they fell ill you would want to cancel your holiday? Again, Flexicover have wording that will often let them wiggle out of refunding your deposits unless you have made lengthy disclosures about the pre-existing conditions of all such people (and presumably paid extra premium in some cases). I bet less than one in a 100 customers discloses any pre-existing conditions of family/friends who are not going on holiday with them. Again, the Post Office exclusion is much more narrow in scope.

I am not saying the Post Office is going to be best for everyone. I am not particularly pushing the Post Office specifically. I am just using it as an example to show that policies can vary in very significant ways, and these differences are not covered in the little table that Money Supermarket shows you. You need to read the small print to understand the differences.

If you really are consistently healthy and never visited the doctor for years, Flexicover or the other cheap policies might be a genuine bargain. But I would guess that the majority of people are (though they do not realise it until they make a claim) effectively not covered for many medical problems, under most travel insurance policies, unless they have disclosed a long list of pre-existings and paid a big extra premium. No wonder Flexicover is so cheap: it is only covering you for medical problems that genuinely appear out of nowhere, where there were no previous symptoms or clues of any kind.

Plumping for most of Martin's recommendations could be a false economy for many of us. I recognise that he lists some pre-existing conditions specialists, but I am not talking about cover for people who have had major problems like cancer or heart transplants, which clearly are a special case. I am talking about ordinary conditions such as cholesterol, mild asthma, back pain, headaches, stress. These are conditions that many of us suffer from. Having these sort of pre-existings isn't a niche requirement, it is the norm. So we should not have to go to an expensive specialist insurer or even have to make declarations to medical screening and pay extra premiums.

I think all these league tables should start by showing the lowest premiums for travel insurance policies that have wording about pre-existings that does cover common problems such as those listed above. They could then go on to mention "specialist" cover for people who are unusually healthy and who really do only need cover for a problem that comes "out of the blue".

How about it Martin? What about a campaign for "standard" travel insurance to include sensible wording about pre-existings that does not mean that normally-healthy people either have to make loads of disclosures and probably pay extra premium or are effectively only partially covered?

Endora_2

Should have looked on this forum sooner, have left a question about this under my original query about holidaying in the Maldives next Feb 09. As my husband and I are not seasoned holiday makers we are new to the holiday booking "thing" so apart from trying to get a good deal I wasn't sure how to go about getting a good deal with the insurance too. Have been quoted £69.99 for the both of us through Thomas Cook if we book their 10 day holiday, seems a bit much but who am I to say? Any help greatfully received.:A

TomsMom

Endora wrote: »

Have been quoted £69.99 for the both of us through Thomas Cook if we book their 10 day holiday, seems a bit much but who am I to say? Any help greatfully received.:A

Don't buy through travel agents, always way overpriced. This is a good place to start http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/cheap-travel-insurance and do a search on the forums here, plenty of recommendations for good priced companies. If you have no pre-existing medical conditions you shouldn't have much trouble but make sure you do declare anything that's pre-existing, under investigation or awaiting an appointment for. Failure to declare can result in your policy being void if you make a claim.

To put Thos. Cook's price into perspective, OH and I managed to find travel insurance last year for the two of us for an annual multi-trip world wide policy for approx £76. That meant any number of trips anywhere in the world (except USA) during a twelve month period and each trip could be up to 42 days. This price included for 5 pre-existing medical conditions for OH.

koru

TomsMom wrote: »

make sure you do declare anything that's pre-existing, under investigation or awaiting an appointment for. Failure to declare can result in your policy being void if you make a claim.

This would be correct for some policies, but not all of them. It depends on the wording. In some cases, failure to declare pre-existings means the whole policy does not apply; in other cases, it means you are not covered for any claim attributable to the pre-existing. Also, as I said in a previous post, the definition of pre-existing can range from "any problem or symptom you have ever had in your whole life" to something a lot more reasonable, that focuses on serious problems, such as cancer and heart disease, and for everything else is only concerned about changes in the last year or even the last three months.

TomsMom

koru wrote: »

This would be correct for some policies, but not all of them. It depends on the wording. In some cases, failure to declare pre-existings means the whole policy does not apply; in other cases, it means you are not covered for any claim attributable to the pre-existing. Also, as I said in a previous post, the definition of pre-existing can range from "any problem or symptom you have ever had in your whole life" to something a lot more reasonable, that focuses on serious problems, such as cancer and heart disease, and for everything else is only concerned about changes in the last year or even the last three months.

Quite agree Koru and illustrates why it's important to make sure. Last year when we were looking for the annual multi-trip policy we asked Halifax to upgrade the European single trip that we already had. They agreed but because one of OH's pre-existing conditions was Pericarditis 11 years ago (and no problem since) they came back with a quote for over £800 and excluded that condition even though they had included it in the European cover we already had . However, Columbus gave us a quote for £76 and included the condition as they only take into account any conditions from the previous 12 months although they required declaration of any conditions from further back.

So to avoid any confusion with any insurance company it's best to declare all. I declare my hypothyroidism, which I've had for over 30 years, stable and treated with standard thyroxine, no hospital appointments and just an annual blood test, and have never been loaded for, yet it's still on the list of conditions when you go through a medical questionnaire.