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?

I feel for the family of the lady in question. I’d be furious if my mum decided to do that. What will happen now - I guess they won’t disconnect her and let her die in the US but every day the costs are mounting. I saw that the cost of her going on a normal commercial flight with oxygen and assistance was 7k which they have raised. But they have no chance of clearing the hospital bills as well. And currently the mum has pneumonia as well and is too unwell to get on a flight. Jesus Christ. How monumentally stupid. I think if you get conditions like that you accept that you can’t travel.

@CountTo10

*Although it wouldn't surprise me one day as part of an Esta/Visa application to the US they make you having insurance a requirement to be granted a Visa.

Yes, I agree. It would be down to individual countries to impose their own border/entry requirements. And yes, the US could easily make valid travel insurance a condition of them granting an ESTA/VISA.

As you say, it would depend on how seriously each country regarded the problem as to how they deal with it. But as we often see, countries do tend to copy each other so if a few countries started to insist on it, it could easily become the norm in other countries too!

Well exactly

But even the USA hasn’t done anything about this. So either they don’t care, or can’t find a workable solution that forces all their tourists to purchase travel insurance before they are allowed to enter

Insurance wasn't regulated back in the day, though. The regulation is a relatively new thing going back 2-3 decades. Prior to that, selling insurance, pensions, etc was pretty much unregulated or very lightly regulated, hence all the mis-selling claims re endowments, mortgages, pensions, etc.

I started work in the early 80s in a small accountancy practice. The owners ran "side line" businesses, one being an insurance agency, another being a hire purchase company, alongside being a building society branch. We weren't qualified regulated under the Financial Services Act as it didn't exist back then. I didn't personally get involved with HP or general insurance, but I certainly did a few applications for clients wanting pensions or mortgages, and that was without any qualifications nor experience/training in those areas.

It all changed, if I remember rightly around the late 80s. I remember a mad scramble by the partners of the firm to create lots of files for all the clients we'd done work for in the areas of insurance, pensions, mortgages, HP, etc., to make up files showing "know your client", risk assessments, due diligence, etc so that we'd be compliant when the new rules/law came into force.

So, depends how far you go back, but I suspect when travel agents tried to sell travel insurance, there weren't the laws/rules surrounding it as there are today. It was probably because the Financial Services Act came into force, that travel agents/travel companies stopped doing it because they'd have need all their staff involved to be trained and qualified and the commissions they'd have made wouldn't have justified that cost.

No, I don't want anything and I have no proposals.

I explained why I responded to your post.

@AquaPeer I just stated a fact as per my original post. I do totally understand all the why's and wherefore of the situation. I'm certainly not advocating a return to that situation.

Although it wouldn't surprise me one day as part of an Esta/Visa application to the US they make you having insurance a requirement to be granted a Visa.

They must be fed up of all the people like the lady in this case running up huge medical bills which will never be paid. From what I've read the family seem to be wanting money to fly her back but they may not release her until they've paid off the huge medical bills she's already incurred.

But it was made illegal because travel agents were unregulated and untrained/ uneducated, selling insurance, a regulated product.
It was completely inappropriate. It also, obvious, did nothing to solve the problem in hand.

It’s nothing, not something. That’s why all the countries in the world weren’t waiting on the brains of MN to solve this non existent problem 😂

It’s madness not to especially in a place like America. The bill will be tens of thousands.

@AquaPeer I didn't say it was a legal requirement. I said that companies used to be able to refuse to sell their products without insurance and it was this practice that was made illegal.

I know why they did it. If you refused to buy their insurance you had to prove you'd bought it elsewhere by providing documentation so many people did buy their insurance without going elsewhere as it was easier and less faff.

Being eligible to use healthcare when abroad doesn't cover your repatriation though, which is usually the biggest cost.

Yes, it wouldn't solve the problem of not having the right insurance or insurance being in valid if not declaring pre existing conditions, but at least it's something. Just as people can still tax their cars or avoid being caught by ANPR cameras when they, personally, aren't insured, but the car is. We've got to start somewhere.

Just because something wouldn't achieve 100% success doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

Having to have at least a travel policy number would at least make most people think about it, raise awareness of the issues, etc., and that would be a good thing, even if some people still weren't actually covered.

I don't understand why this bothers so many people. It's not like we're being forced to pay for it. Literally if you don't want to pay, you don't.

That wasn’t a legal requirement that was just so the travel agent could flog you (unsuitable, unregulated) insurance

You do not remember correctly

I don't mind them as I would never pay into one. Like someone said above her daughter doesn't have the funds to pay her medical bills and evidently some people don't mind paying as she's got the full amount now I think.

If I remember rightly there was a time when you couldn't book a flight or package holiday without proving you had insurance and then legislation changed making it illegal for airlines and holiday companies to do that.

Quite. To be honest at this age with those conditions if i couldn’t have afforded the insurance I might have gone anyway but on the strict understanding i wouldn’t seek medical help/have anything done for me. Though I guess it gets complicated if you’re too ill to fly home but haven’t died yet. Or if you’re in hospital waiting to die, not having treatment but still racking up bills just by taking up a bed space.

How would that work? What about all the people entitled to use the healthcare where they are going? What about all.the people who'd have insurance that doesn't actually cover them? Who's doing the checking? What about all the times people don't need to go through border control at all?

She could afford it though. She went to Florida for 4 weeks, could have gone for 2 weeks and easily paid for insurance too.

She's 76 with COPD, atrial fibrillation, uses 3 inhalers and needed a wheelchair to get about Disney. You don't need to be an actuary to work out she has a pretty high risk of needing medical attention spending a month in America.

Having just googled this sad story I actually feel sorry for her daughter who is finding herself in this awful situation and probably has absolutely no other options. The primary focus of her fundraising is to get her mother home and currently that sounds unlikely.

The medical bills will be vast and I have no idea how aggressively the hospital will press for this but I imagine they are ruthless. The stress of that knowledge must be huge.

To those saying that £3000 is ridiculous, surely the facts of this case reflect exactly why Insurance is so expensive for those who are most likely to fall ill.

Im not donating but I wish them well and hope they get their mother home soon.

She's been more than "a bit silly".
Travel insurance should be costed as part of the overall holiday. This woman knew what she was doing and on this occasion it but her on the arse. I obviously hope she pulls through but she deserves the consequences of her behaviour.

We had a holiday booked, insurance for my daughter was just under 3k for a week holiday, we cancelled the holiday considering it was costing more for the insurance. I had my family say why not just go without everything would be fine etc and we want you all there. I still cancelled and thankfully I did, she then had a 5 week hospital admission which was around the time we would’ve been on holiday.

Never worth the risk imo. I wouldn’t be inclined to donate to that cause either, play silly games, win silly prizes!

Who makes all the countries in the world do this?

The quote of £3000-6000 is almost certainly because the woman's travel destination was the USA, which has astronomical health costs. I suspect, for all of you saying that you can't afford to travel if that's what it costs for those with medical conditions, that if you want to go somewhere in Europe it will be a lot less. Get a quote and find out - it's really not that hard. Go to moneysupermarket.com and do a bit of research.

But if this idiotic woman had paid £6000 for travel insurance for this trip, it would've been a bargain, wouldn't it?! Her family is going to be faced with a bill running into the hundreds of thousands. Six grand is a drop in the ocean compared to that. I think it's actually a very reasonable premium for someone with such complex needs as this woman has. But it's like anything else in life - you do or buy what you can afford. It's not up to others to subsidise you so you can do whatever you want.