To be sick of people starting to fund me pages when they go on holiday without travel insurance and can’t afford medical bills when they end up in hospital?

The medical provider would need to bring legal action in the UK against her and enforce that judgment here. For medical bills, which tend to be enormous, that would be worth their while.

@angrymenopausal My guess is that her family will be asked to pay something before she leaves, because as @AquaPeer says, it's difficult to chase debts abroad. Hospitals here in the US accept credit cards so they might say give us $10K and we'll write the rest off, for example.

I'm just speculating, of course, but I can't see an American hospital letting her off completely, we all have to pay here!

there has got to be a reason why this woman, what after many years of travel suddenly decided not to pay for insurance. It was a gamble she took that didn’t pay off. Them the chances you take

Do we know for a fact she took out travel insurance the 20 previous times she travelled to Florida?

If she hadn’t fallen sick on this trip she would’ve came back fine and no-one would’ve known.

She may have incredibly “bad luck” and this is the first time she’s not arranged insurance, but personally I doubt it’s the first time. It’s just the first time she’s got sick while not having travel insurance.

I went to the states and wanted to make sure I was covered for absolutely everything

i used allclear and disclosed everything from menorrhagia to Diabetes. As they were a specialist firm they only asked key questions not ALL the unnecessary questions other insurers do because they offer standard, generic insurance. It only cost me £150 more for the trip

there has got to be a reason why this woman, what after many years of travel suddenly decided not to pay for insurance. It was a gamble she took that didn’t pay off. Them the chances you take

i do feel sorry for her daughter though

Yes repatriation of a dead body is not mandatory, but I think other posters may have been referring to those who take ill abroad and need to be air vacced (evac by special medical plane sorry for the dense description!). I suppose it's one thing to die abroad and be cremated there, quite another to be very ill or paralysed etc. and need to get back home.

A person might get away with not having travel insurance if they pop their clogs in Benidorm, but if they are critically injured and need to get home, then travel insurance is the only way that's going to happen in a medivac situation.

No I’m agreeing with you- plenty of posters saying you must have insurance for repatriation but not at all- you don’t have to be repatriated

I was referring to GoFundMe appeals to bring a body home, when travel insurance was not taken out, or doesn't cover repatriation of a corpse.

I must be clearer when posting. 😊

She spent five days in intensive care and is now in critical care. This guy ended up paying $8000 per day for his ICU stay in a Florida hospital - and that was just the room without medical treatment and drugs included, two years ago.

If the critical care room is charged on the basis of being a non-ICU room, then you start to get the sense of why her insurance quote was 3 grand - given that it doesn't even cover the costs of half a day in the hospital where she is.

I suspect her medical bill is already into six figures, even without the quote for medflighting her back to the UK.

https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2022/08/12/for-patients-in-florida--hospital-bills-rank-among-the-highest-in-the-nation

Well obviously you don’t have to repatriate a body. Who is going to make you? It’s a choice because you want to bring them home, not a requirement

I wouldn't donate in this case. I would for a child whose parents failed to arrange insurance because untreated injuries or sickness can be life-altering and the child deserves a helping hand.

Exactly this. Don't go off on holiday abroad with all your multiple health conditions, withOUT insurance, and then expect others to cough up if you become ill, and have a medical bill costing 10s of 1000s of pounds!

Why repatriate a body FGS, have a direct cremation there, and a service back home with the urn in pride of place. Those are my instructions if anything should happen (i.e. I die stone dead) on my travels.

I do realise that legalities have to happen, but still... And I have annual insurance in case anyone is wondering.

A person has multiple medical conditions > high insurance premium for a reason . They’re more likely to become ill. Surely it’s not rocket science to work that out?
And if you can’t afford the insurance you can’t afford the holiday.

Yeah seeing as she did get ill, £3,000 is about 5% of what the total bill will end up being. And there was a huge risk.

@ScupperedbytheSea · Today 09:46

To those saying that £3k is a ridiculous amount. The women had chronic conditions and was travelling to the most medically expensive country in the world for a month.

The chances of her needing medical treatment / hospitalisation were probably pretty high. Flying long haul is notorious for spreading viruses, so having COPD makes you massively vulnerable.

Well then she shouldn't have gone then.

As for the (few) posters saying 'well I have this condition and that condition and the other condition, should I not go abroad then because I can't get medical insurance - or can't afford it?'

Well no frankly. You shouldn't. And if you do, and you get landed with a massive medical bill, that's on you. Deal with it.

@MandyFriend · Today 09:48

I am tired of funding other people's bad decisions. When people decide not to get insurance either because it's too expensive or they can't be bothered then they come unstuck, I have no sympathy for them!

This. ^ So many entitled whiny people honestly! Frothing and moaning, at situations that THEY have created.

It’s just a normal debt, they chase it in the usual way. I doubt you can use the British legal system to enforce a debt from the USA though and even so- to be honest- why would someone in her age or in her condition really care if she was made bankrupt or had a charge put on her house?

I had a (small, insured) medical bill in New York and when they sent the invoice to my house in London it said very clearly across the bottom
“please note we do not pursue debt outside of the USA”

so not sure of the background to that comment but clearly there is an issue with getting debts from abroad

To all those saying the insurance was criminally expensive.... well that is how insurance works, the higher the risk the more the premium.
As can now be seen, she was much more likely to get sick than a young, fit, 20-something who likely could have got insurance for 20 quid.

If you take the risk, you pay the price when things go wrong - you don't set up a GFM for other people to pay, just because you were too tight to pay travel insurance.
And don't give me the shit about how it was too expensive... no one made her go on a 4 week holiday to Florida, cut your cloth... and all that.

Can any anybody explain what will happen with the US medical bills?
Clearly they aren't going to be able to pay them before she leaves. What happens next once the patient has left the country?

Of course it’s not become acceptable not to pay for things and set to a go fund me. Medical bills abroad are as old as time. What do you think they do, put you in prison? Of course it’s stressful but no way are 90% of the go fund mes going too come even close to paying for the medical bills, it’s completely ineffective. Clearly the people return to the uk somehow (the turkey paraglider girl had a charity pay for med vac) then when you are on it of the country the £1m you owe a Florida hospital takes a step back in priority rather 😆 you don’t think people actually pay this stuff off with go fund mes?

Who donates money to a complete stranger anyway. I personally couldn’t give a fuck what happens to them if I don’t know them.

Exactly this.

For the people saying that if people don’t like it then don’t donate that’s not quite the point.

The fact is that it’s become an accepted norm now to assume that you don’t have to pay for things, all you need is to set up.a begging fund and the gullible public will come running.

And often the people who donate to these things are people who themselves don’t have much to give. They think of themselves as not being able to afford treatment and before they know it they’re handing over their cash.

Nobody feels they need to take responsibility any more. Just start a gofundme and people will donate if you make the sob story sad enough.

Yes I’ve just looked on the go fund me and the 50k they are raising is purely for the air ambulance. How are they going to pay the hundreds of thousands the hospital will cost? If they couldn’t afford 3k on insurance!

The only time I've donated to one of these was when the deadbeat divorced dad actually died abroad and hadn't bothered with insurance because of pre-existing liver problems due to alcoholism. His poor kids (18 and 21) were lumbered with getting his body repatriated.

I remember a thread on here a while back about a similar situation. An elderly parent was either choosing to travel without insurance or had already done so and something had happened. The poor family had tried to stop her.
I don't get the impression in this case that the family she travelled with were unaware. Could be wrong of course.