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..

Yes. Within Europe. Would have cost a 5 figure sum.

Thankfully we are all fit and healthy

Me, repatriated back from Greece with badly broken leg (external fixator), 12 seats taken out of the back of a virgin plane so that a stretcher could be fitted in, plus a repatriation nurse. No idea what it cost because i had insurance!

Go fund me beckons…

I shouldn't have asked that should? 😂

But i still maintain its extremely rare but of course thats what insurance is for isn't it.

It is indeed extremely rare. If 100,000 people who buy holiday insurance each have £1 of their policy premium covering the expense of the 0.0001% of them who need a repatriation flight, then those £1 contributions cover that £100,000 cost. (I don't know what the actual stats are. It might be 1,000,000 people contributing 10p)

Equally if 100,000 people who don't believe in holiday insurance each contribute £1 to the GoFundMe of someone who didn't bother with insurance and had to fork out £100,000 in order to get home, the overall effect is broadly the same. However the 2nd category is a lot more stressful and uncertain. I would rather be in the first category.

Medical repatriations are statistically "rare" (one person in many thousands) but given the high number of people on holiday at any given time, they are still fairly common - probably 20-50 a week as an educated guess. For example, over 13 million people visit Spain from the UK each year. If one person in 10,000 needs a medical evacuation that is still 1,300 people, or an average of 20 people a week, just for Spain.

Back in my travel rep days, my company also had a Scandinavian subsidiary. The Scandinavian insurance companies had a scheme under which they pooled their resources and had pre-chartered medical repatriation flights on stand-by throughout the holiday seasons. Just from the local airport for the area where I was based, there were two flights a week (mid-week and Saturday) for guests requiring medical repatriation, and as many as 5 pre-chartered flights in peak weeks. This was for the Scandinavian tourists who numbered far fewer than the UK tourists to the same area.

MIL had a kidney transplant many years ago. Off they go to the US, thought they didn't need to tell the insurance company because "it was a long time ago". Fortunately nothing went wrong.

It depends on which country you visit.
Lots of Orthodox churches are opposed to cremation,
most Islamic countries only offer burial, even secular Turkey has no crematorium.
Greece got its first crematorium in 2019. It’s still the only one in the islands

No. Emergency care is covered. I have ended up in hospital and needed surgery , my husband was in for week. All covered by ehic. With my heath condition travel insurance would have excluded it anyway

I’ve got insurance and it’s expensive due to pre-existing medical conditions. What I found absolutely infuriating was that they wouldn’t explain what a particular question meant and it was vital that I get it right. It turned out that the year before I’d got it wrong unintentionally so my insurance was actually invalid. I’m sure they just don’t want to pay out.

Ehic (GHIC now) entitles you to the same treatment as locals so it very much depends on what they get included or what they have to pay for.
Sorry, quoted the wrong post!

How on earth is it right that a provider cannot explain what they mean to a customer! I think that fails basic quality management principles. Poor show insurance company.

And finding out later you weren’t covered would destroy any confidence I might have had when going through the insurers detailed information.

I honestly think it’s deliberate.

Yes, I broke something in France. I had to pay a top up on the EHIC card which is what local people have to do in France. The trouble is that in Spain, as a non local, you will be taken to a private hospital.

Not if you ask to go to a public hospital

As would i.

Anyway, going to eat my words now, a friend went skiing last week, her partner broke his leg on the slopes, no insurance, GHIC covered the medical treatment and he could fly home with just a small surcharge for a seat change (still more than insurance!)

However taking him down off the mountain cost £1500, which is not covered by GHIC.

An expensive lesson why insurance is usually the cheaper option.

In my experience a body will come back to the UK as cargo. Not as a person. That may have changed since my experience but my brother was flown back to Scotland on a cargo flight. I don’t know how ashes travel.

Going skiing without insurance is unfathomably stupid. Could they afford the £1500?

My sons went abroad for the weekend in summer. I don't think it even occurred to them that they'd need insurance. I used to work in travel insurance a long time ago, so I insisted they bought some. I think it cost them £7.50. Peanuts compared to any hospital bills.

Cautionary tale: my parents used to spend half their time in Spain. My mother used to always book using her AmEx card which had automatic travel insurance, so she never had to think about. Well of course this one time she used a different card for whatever reason which didn’t have insurance cover and sure enough my father had a stroke. After the poor care (sorry, I know so many wax lyrical about the healthcare in Spain), once he was deemed fit enough we flew him back to the UK where he got exemplary care at a London hospital. My mother paid the £12,500 for the medical plane to get him back. Sadly he had another stroke and did pass away a few weeks later, but he was here, and me and my mother could visit him daily. Always take out insurance.

Not if you are cremated ashes in an urn. Hand luggage is fine.

I wouldn’t expect a relative to try and stuff my lifeless corpse into an overhead locker.

I had to change insurance companies last year. When I phoned up to make a small change to the policy I happened to sneeze whilst talking to the agent. He asked me about my health problem and when told I didn’t have one he referred to the sneeze. He was adamant about putting on the policy that I had an undisclosed medical condition, so I told him to forget it and went elsewhere. Good job I did, as I had an accident requiring medical treatment on my next holiday and am not confident that I’d have had my costs covered if I’d stayed with them.

i declared HRT to my insurers recently. They said as it’s for a natural occurrence (well that’s not exactly what they said but you know what I mean!) that it makes no difference to the policy.

People need to realise how important it is to let your insurers know about any doctor trips, new conditions etc, to ensure your insurance stays valid. I have annual family insurance with my bank account. I called them recently as both DH and I are waiting for tests / test results. These have been noted and the particular issues will not be covered. That’s fine as they aren’t the kind of thing that are going to cause issues on holiday (think - dermatology referral). The insurance person then went through all medical info for the last year and documented it. My son broke his ankle last year. I was diagnosed with a an ovarian cyst. Interestingly the cyst has increased my premium. I assume because there’s a chance it might rupture and need intervention? I declared hypertension a few years ago which did not increase my premium, I had expected it to.

ultimately I think getting insurance is essential because you really have no idea what might happen, before or during. It’s also really important to make sure no stone is unturned when going through your medical history / current issues and referrals. It’s a faff, but it could well end up saving you hundreds of thousands of pounds.

I think it's one of these things that should perhaps be taught in a life experience school class along with things such as internet safety, learning about mortgages, savings accounts etc. Of course parents too should be advising their children of these things but some parents just simply don't care.

I know someone who said out loud that they didn't need insurance "because nothing has ever happened to me on holiday".

I really don't know how some people can be so thick.