Do you think holiday insurance is a necessity or a luxury?

It riles me when people go on holiday without insurance (or don’t read the policy properly), take ill and then set up a crowd funding to pay for treatment/repatriation

Not only do I always have insurance, I would also never contribute to a crowd fund for a feckless idiot who went abroad without it.

When I was young and invincible, I used to travel without insurance.

Now I'm old and have children, so I always have health insurance. I can't imagine something happening to one of my children and not having that backup.

I agree. A relative of mine (previously healthy) was taken ill in France. He was airlifted to hospital, very sick. They did tests and discovered it was cancer, and pneumonia. He had to stay in hospital for a few weeks until he was stable enough to be brought home by air ambulance. The total cost was over £300K and when he died soon after, his house had to be sold to pay the bill, leaving his poor wife destitute.

People don’t realise that an EHIC card doesn’t really cover much more than a broken arm or a course of antibiotics. They think that because it’s France, they’re covered for everything.

If your passport was in your bag that was stolen, on your return to the airport to fly home, you’d have to pay for a later flight and potentially stay in a hotel while new documents were sorted. That could get expensive.
Replacing a stolen phone is costly too.

@Monty36 it's not really a scandal, you are being charged according to your risk profile, unless you think lower risk people should subsidise higher risk people's travel insurance?

Some of the very high prices may be a "fuck off" price. The generic insurers often do not want to insure complex people but don't want to refuse a quote. If your needs a complex you are better off going through a specialist broker.

Your colleague is an idiot.

She's an idiot for not having travel insurance and doubly so for saying "boomer mentality"

Necessity, if you can’t afford comprehensive insurance don’t go abroad. I will qualify that and say it’s quite different nipping to Paris or Amsterdam for a weekend without insurance and I do understand why someone with complex health issues might make a decision to not have coverage because it’s so high, but anywhere my dad couldn’t get to in a day to pick me up in theory you need insurance. We have a variety of health issues and are middle aged - it costs £10 a month through the bank, all conditions covered.

I delayed booking to go to a wedding last year because I was waiting for test results and therefore would not have been able to get insurance. (In fact, I finished up paying £400 to be seen privately - cheaper than going abroad without insurance and falling ill.)

For most people travel insurance does not cost anything like £3k. Obviously for people with certain conditions it will increase but for the sort of people you generally see in gofundmes it was will have been peanuts.

My annual multi trip European cover with Saga insurance was £52 last year and same again last year with two declared conditions. I can even do dinghy sailing on that.

Her choice or not available?
I rode round Paris suburbs years ago as an uninsured teen with no helmet.
People I was staying with did it and I didn’t give a second thought
Easy for older wiser me to tut

Is there something missing from this. As he must have serious health conditions or be very elderly, or both. I think everyone knows if you’ve medical conditions it costs a lot,so it goes without saying it won’t be cheap.

I know a man in his late 50s - no known health conditions, fit and healthy, non-smoker, not a big drinker, not overweight - who had a serious stroke while on holiday in Jersey. His travel insurance paid for a lengthy hospital stay - of about 6 weeks, about 3 weeks of rehabilitation, and a repatriation flight back to Scotland. The insurance was well worth it!

People don’t see it as a necessity because mugs kindhearted people donate to go fund me to cover the bills when it does go wrong after all.

i always get insurance.

I would have put the cheeky cow in her place, boomer my arse, at 51 that isn't your generation.

Absolutely, those latter things are usually quite trivial expenses and I'll happily skimp on insuring them.

There was a story in the press recently about a young British woman who had a nasty scooter accident in Goa which left her with head injuries. The £20k medical bills weren’t covered by the insurance company as she wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Absolute necessity.
I have always bought travel insurance annually as i travel often and it works out cheaper. In the last 20 yrs i've needed to claim on it 3 times for accident/illness and it was worth it in spades. I think it should be a requirement of booking a holiday to have basic insurance.
I dont know how people can be so stupid as to think it doesnt matter,if you can a ford a holiday you can afford insurance.Surely?

I imagine many on here will not have pre existing health problems.
If you do you are looking at a hefty three figure sum for insurance.
I will get it for trips abroad. But it is a bit of a scandal.

I think it’s essential, but I do wish people would stop saying the cost is reasonable/cheap, as if that’s the case for everyone.

A worldwide annual policy for my husband is £5,000. An annual policy for Europe alone is £1,000. To visit the US (he is American) this year for 3 weeks is £2.500. We will cough up for the US single trip and Europe annual because it’s essential, but with my policy on top that will be £3,800 which is not cheap by anyone’s standards.

Even in the UK you need travel insurance- freak accident and you end up in ITU 200 miles from home and you will be repatriated much quicker- and family can use it to help with hotel bills and travel... Seriously it's an absolute non-negotiable part of any trip here or abroad. We have an annual policy to cover me, husband and little one here and in Europe.....

I haven’t heard of that option but thank you as I will look into that.

Try insurancewith.com.

Was set up by a lady with cancer. Covers many conditions others won't. Definitely worth a try.

I never travel without insurance. I have year-round insurance - travel a lot, family abroad, which is about 7 euros a month.

Just today I read a Belgian guy fell off a cliff on a Greek island while taking a selfie.
He's been airlifted to a hospital in Athens.

You never know what life's going to bring.

Travelling to some countries without is foolish. The USA being one of them.