Holiday insurance.. why don't people get it?

[15February1960]

Reading so much lately about people going abroad on holiday without insurance.. then setting up Go Fund Me to help.. Then people even in the UK having to cancel holidays because of illness etc leaving them or friends out of pocket.. why don't people think to get insurance even if you live in the UK and are holidaying in the UK? I have annual insurance that covers abroad and the UK..

Holiday insurance is more than just insurance for medical treatment (and GHIC only covers people in Europe on the same basis as local people would be covered, so many things that might be covered in the UK are not covered in Europe - such as helicopter transfers or even ambulance transfers).

It covers cancellations - e.g. if you fall ill or have an accident before you can take the holiday and have to cancel. Likewise if you have to cancel because of a close family bereavement.

Holiday insurance covers repatriation should you fall ill or be injured in an accident and need to be transferred back to the UK. It also covers the additional costs of someone having to stay with you (e.g. a partner staying in a local hotel for 10 days until you're well enough to be repatriated).

If you are involved in an accident, it should cover any legal costs - e.g. you get hit by a cyclist and break a hip and need to sue for compensation or loss of earnings. It also covers the reverse situation - if you cause the accident and are sued by the injured party. It should also include liability insurance, so if after the legal case you are ordered to pay damages to the third party (which may be tens of thousands of pounds) you are covered.

One of my colleagues had leukaemia as a young adult her insurance is prohibitive.

Wow and not in a good way. After I spotted the long list of excluded activities I do remember checking swimming

Lots of them do have insurance but only basic which is invalidated if drunk or behaving in a reckless manner and more often doesn’t cover repatriation or costs of family travelling to accompany in hospital

I worked with a woman who would never get travel insurance. She said she always had "no money to" yet would always find to money to book the holiday. She was 50's/60's when I worked with her, so not particularly the lowest risk age wise, in fact I recall she was on meds for high blood pressure.

She "only" went short haul, usually to Spain, although I think Spain's health service can be a bit funny with tourism and an EHIC/GHIC wouldn't cover you to use their health service.

I’ve always had insurance but i’ve gotten drunk on holiday, I’ve surfed, windsurfed, dived etc. Who knows if I was covered or not.

Again I think the detail tells you if you will be covered for all those things, eg I think it can make a difference if you and your travelling companion or party are on separate policies, separate companies, etc, I remember checking stuff to do with others in the party during Covid times and they varied then in terms of what the companion was entitled to.

God I hate anything to do with buying insurance it’s so stress and prone to inadvertently not getting what you need.

Ex-travel rep here.

Yes - I have known people who have had to be repatriated on a special medical flight. If someone has had a major medical episode or accident it is not always a case of putting them in a wheelchair and booking a £100 EasyJet flight back to Luton.

If they have to be lying down, sedated, accompanied by a medic and possibly hooked up to various monitors then the costs potentially run into tens of thousands.

I just don’t think most people expect what can be considered pretty normal holiday activities to be excluded.

What about HRT?

@savemetoo what if one of you got ill and you couldn’t travel on holiday? Would you not want to get the flight money back? Or if you had your phone stolen on holiday?

@PalamosPaloma I only learned there was a possibility that stuff like that could invalidate your claim through MNs in my 30s!

Yes! When I was younger I just ticked the Y box - mind you I didn’t have anything to declare but I would certainly have been involved in alcohol consumption ….

My mum and her husband go on holiday without insurance because we live in a place where there are only a few options for travel insurance and they have medical conditions that make the insurance more expensive than the holiday. It's a worry but a risk they're prepared to occasionally take. It isn't straightforward for everyone.

Sure repatriation is not covered but honestly, do you know anyone who has had to do that?
I do. Years ago one of my colleagues' husband had an accident whilst on holiday in, if I recall rightly, Thailand. He was in ICU there for several weeks and then flown back, still on a ventilator, to an ICU in this country. I can't imagine how much that must have cost.
Obviously it is rare, and most of us will go through our lives without anything like that happening to us or anyone we know, but if it does it is potentially a complete disaster. That's often the type of situation that the people the OP refers to who start Go Fund Me appeals are in isn't it, and I doubt any of them ever imagined it would happen to them. There's one I remember reading a while ago that was a really freak accident and you have to feel some sympathy because nobody could have predicted it, but then that's what insurance is for isn't it?

Yes I do. Good friend of mine was 21. She’d just cancelled her wedding as she realised she was too young to settle down. Went on holiday to some Spanish resort with a married couple.They got back at about 3 and carried on chatting. She sat on the side of the balcony and apparently all the other balconies had a wall behind them so she leaned back thinking she was going to rest her back against the wall.

There wasn’t a wall and she fell 40 feet to the ground. She was in ICU in the country for about a month and had to be flown back to the UK in a private jet with full medical assistance. Maybe young people were less stupid 40 years ago and she had full medical insurance. She was in specialist spinal unit in the UK for about 6 months. She was a tetraplegic and died about 15 years ago and the Coroner said it was a direct result of the fall.

I always have insurance but the way insurance companies wangle out of paying for certain things Is incredible ! We had a claim once and between excesses and the crazy conditions we ended up very much out of pocket .
I’d never assume a generic ‘free from my bank’ policy would cover me for anything !!
Read the terms and conditions in detail before assuming you’re covered . You’ll find on many occasions you won’t be . I’d be interested to know how satisfied people who have had to make a claim actually are with their insurance.

Yes, that's another thing, people travelling together under separate policies, we have young adult DC and can insure us all together for single trip but if we switch to annual with the bank which we were thinking of doing we couldn't have the oldest on the policy now so they would have to insure separately, but if they had an accident and one of us needed to stay with them I'm not sure if that would be covered. I hate insurance too.

It's unbelievable that people don't take out insurance. It's part of the holiday cost. I was talking to a friend recently who said she didn't take out holiday insurance as it was too expensive. I've just paid £95-ish for two and that's including one of us with medical issues. That is a small percentage of the cost of the holiday.

Those who don't get insurance but only go to Europe and rely on the GHIC, do you not worry about if you became ill on the flight? That will cost many thousands if the plane had to do an emergency landing because a passenger became ill.

On the last flight I was on, there was an announcement if any doctors or nurses could make themselves known to the crew, as a passenger had become ill. A decision was made that the passenger could wait until we landed at the scheduled airport, thankfully, but there is always a risk that anyone could become ill on a flight.

But it is not just a bit extra, especially when you get older. We do have annual holiday insurance but for the two of us it is over 1k a year and rules out certain countries. At the end of the day, if we didn’t have insurance we could afford to Medivac ourselves home so it is something to think about.

I have had holiday insurance for the past decade with zero incidents. I still have it, but it's pretty easy to understand why people might skip it.

My MIL had a friend who barely had an original working organ in her body... She loved her holidays, though, and when we said 'Isn't the insurance really expensive with all your pre-existing conditions?' she chuckled and said 'Ha, I don't tell them!'

🤦‍♀️

UK holidays I gamble, I've so far never had to cancel, so even if I did on the next trip it would be an overall saving for all the years it's been fine.

But I would never set foot abroad without insurance.

I had to be repatriated back from greece with a badly broken leg and I hate to think what it cost the insurance company. Ambulance, emergency care, ambulance, surgery (external fixator), 2 night is state hospital, anticoagulant injections, ambulance, night in private hospital, ambulance, flight home on stretcher on normal Virgin flight where they take 12 seats out in order to suspend a stretcher accompanied by nurse, transfer form Heathrow to NHS hospital still with repatriation nurse. I also had my Dad back home and the insurance company fighting my corner to get things moving and me moving.

There are companies that will exclude the thing you are awaiting diagnosis. AllClear for one. If it was something minor unlikely to be an issue on holiday I would use them.

Spain's health service can be a bit funny with tourism and an EHIC/GHIC wouldn't cover you to use their health service.
That's exactly what a GHIC is for, it allows you to use the country's national health service for urgent matters. Not for routine healthcare though.
I have health insurance which is very expensive due to medical conditions but I would avoid using private hospitals abroad if possible as they over test and over treat for travel insurance money.
Last year in Spain I had an attack of my pre-existing condition. Went to the local Salud clinic, showed my GHIC, was seen in 5 minutes, admitted for treatment and discharged later that day. No charge apart from about 5 Euros for a prescription.