Another day, another person with inadequate travel insurance

What about where undiagnosed? For example we took her to hospital at Xmas as bad stomach pain but no diagnosis?

Because most people can't afford that much. Yet often feel that after what they've been through, they deserve to take that dream holiday. IT doesn't make them a bad person-they might have worked harder/done more in their lives than another person who can afford to buy the insurance.
There are some people who spend all their money on unnecessary things, then say they don't have enough left to feed themselves/pay for their kid's school trip, and happily take other people's money to pay for it. Some of us wouldn't buy the unnecessary stuff and save so we can pay it ourselves.

Received our annual travel insurance policy renewal and realised a number of Mrs B's conditions, which include Chronic Kidney Disease, had not been previously declared. Added them but now LV won't cover them.

Shopping around.

Declare it all! Otherwise they may wriggle out. It's not worth the risk. My favourite one for DS was a visit for a boil (in his ear). Couldn't find that in the drop down list so had to select 'Carbuncle' instead!

That was my point. No one ever thinks it will happen to them. Until it does.

My dad got banned from CV by his travel insurance! They said it wasn’t worth it. His cardiologist agreed.

This.

I have complex medical needs - long term, indefinite ongoing PIP, under 5 different consultants etc etc. We considered going to CV one year and did some research into it and decided it definitely isn’t the holiday for someone with health issues - even on the largest island there’s one Doctor, no hospitals. Medical care is absolutely basic at best. For anything more complex than basic food poisoning (of which there is a lot!) you’d need to be airlifted off. People just don’t realise what it’s like in a bad situation, they’re too focused on the sun and the beaches.

I've never considered this. When I'm booking travel insurance I just check we're covered for all the activities we plan to do and have all health conditions declared. It just never occurred to me that someone might die and I'd need to check the insurance covered bringing them home.

We went with travelinsurance4medical. co. uk

It was all online, they ask a question up front along the lines of 'Is anyone on the policy waiting for test results/ investigations/procedures' and we ticked yes. A pop-up box appeared which just said that any such condition would be excluded for cancellation or curtailment of the holiday. Then we declared all our conditions in the normal way - for my 'lesion on arm' the only follow-up question was 'has the lesion been diagnosed as cancer' which I could answer honestly as 'no' since I was awaiting the investigations.

So while cancellation/curtailment was excluded, had I needed emergency treatment for my mole whilst on holiday I would have been covered. A mole is obviously a poor example as it would never require emergency treatment; had I been waiting tests for a cardiac condition instead, I expect this would have increased the premium by £££ once I declared the condition and answered the (presumably many) questions about it.

I’ve never understood people who don’t buy adequate travel insurance. My brother, who as far as anyone knew, was fit and healthy when he went on his last trip, suffered a ruptured aneurysm in a rural area of Bolivia. His insurance company paid for a private transfer to a major city, where he was in hospital for three days before he was moved by a chartered private plane to Lima. He was in hospital for over two weeks, in a coma, while the insurance company made arrangements to transfer him back to Australia where he lived. The flight home was in a small air ambulance, with a full medical team, and it took nearly two days to get him back. He was pronounced brain dead when he arrived back in Australia and his life support equipment was turned off the next day. The total cost of the claim was around £120,000, which would have been near impossible to have paid if he hadn’t had proper insurance. When he left home, the last thing he or his wife ever expected was to be coming back in an air ambulance.

It is interesting as I have been trying to get travel insurance today. How far do you go with declaring as it suggests you need to tell them about every Dr visit in the last 2 years? Fine for me but seems excessive for the kids! None of us have any medical conditions.

I can't see any reason to criticise the poor woman. The couple had insurance; he unexpectedly died. She must have been in shock and perhaps made a quick decision that meant she could go home without the time and hassle likely to be needed to arrange repatriation.
It's a sad story.

Well, for most people it doesn't, as that's how insurance works and for a lot of people it's cheap as anything happening is fairly unlikely.

And some insurers don't even tell you to declare pre-existing conditions. We have annual travel insurance with our home insurance policy and I had to ask the insurers whether we should declare medical conditions as it didn't say anywhere in the documents that you had to. They agreed it might be a good idea!

I think people imagine Cape Verde to have similar infrastructure to Madeira or the Canaries.

I doesn't.

And those people are usually right. I think it's reasonable to make one's own decision to accept certain risks (eg you accept that if you die abroad you won't be brought back to the UK). And it's reasonable to "self-insure" - you accept that in the unlikely event of a serious injury in an accident, or an unexpected health crisis, you will pay for repatriation to the UK out of your own pocket. After all, for some people travel insurance is extremely expensive and self-insuring may well make financial sense.
An obvious tactic is to stay within Europe, where you are protected to some degree by the European health card, and where you are closer to the UK, which presumably makes repatriation cheaper. You also have the option of train or bus if you have a problem with flying.

People are talking as if all travel insurers require the same exhaustive medical information, and saying that insurance cover is all or nothing. They don't and it isn't. I applied for insurance recently and was only required to declare conditions I'd seen a doctor about or had medication for in the previous 6 months. Because I was waiting for a gp appointment to discuss some symptoms I'd been having, they said they wouldn't insure for medical issues until I'd had that appointment. However, I could go ahead with the insurance to cover everything else (cancelled flights, lost luggage etc). So I did that, called them again when I'd had the appointment, and at that stage they added medical cover for a reasonable additional charge.

Some people think nothing that bad will happen to them

@tedglenn may I ask which company you went with? Did they cover you for the thing you were waiting for a test or just exclude it and cover everything else?

Fair,

Well ordinarily you could but as we keep saying no cremations in Cape Verde.

I know this is not exactly the thread topic but is it not possible to have the body cremated over in whatever country you are in and then just bring the ashes back in your own luggage?

ETA: OK I see this was asked already, ignore!

oh, ok.

Tbh maybe CV could do with crematorium if they have a lot of severe noro cases.

i was going to say i wouldnt pay extra for repatriation after death. But i guess in some places it could be really expensive for a plot ?