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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think that people who don't use travel insurance are crazy?

121 replies

cwtch4967 · 09/04/2012 19:41

Why on earth would you book a holiday abroad and not take out insurance? So many people ignore the need to be properly insured, I just don't get it?

I've read posts where people say they don't bother in Europe - who is going to pay to get them home if something serious happens?

Is it just me???

OP posts:

fortyplus · 10/04/2012 00:03

Even in Europe you'll receive medical treatment but would need insurance to cover the cost of an air ambulance to bring you home if you were seriously ill.

I know a family whose 2yo dd was burned so badly in India that she had only a tiny chance of survival. They had no travel insurance. The family had to find £50,000 to fly her home - and that was in 1989.

Kladdkaka · 10/04/2012 00:03

Although to be fair Bogeyface even care of people is ultimately based on cost.

parakeet · 10/04/2012 00:04

Where do you draw the line with regards to paying for vetinary costs then? £3500? £5000? £10,000? Obviously you would draw the line somewhere.

And what does it mean, the rest of its natural life? According to "nature", cats would die of cancer and the like, they wouldn't have expensive surgery.

parakeet · 10/04/2012 00:04

Going to bed now, goodnight all.

Bogeyface · 10/04/2012 00:05

By natural life, I meant before it was ended prematurely by its owner!

Dawnybabe · 10/04/2012 00:19

YADNBU

I knew a woman whose husband had a massive heart attack and died on holiday in Spain. She couldn't afford to fly him back so had him buried out there. She said he'd be happy out there so it didn't matter to her.

differentnameforthis · 10/04/2012 02:53

Surprise baby, inadequate insurance

Thumbbunny · 10/04/2012 03:24

Wow, I thought differentname had beaten me to it with her link, but incredibly (and I'm using that word advisedly) there is another instance of the same thing, this time in Canada.

Rest assured that if Canada does not have reciprocal health cover with Australia, it won't have it with the UK either. And it's probably as expensive as the USA in healthcare costs. The difference (apparently) is that the baby born in the US may be entitled to US citizenship; the one in Canada isn't entitled to Canadian citizenship.

What's worse is that both couples did have travel insurance but it didn't cover them for the birth of their premature babies, despite being covered for the pregnancy - this is a shocking loophole in the insurance! one would expect that a complication of pregnancy would include premature birth, surely?

mind you I'm not surprised that the couple in the US story are having problems, I've heard nothing good about AAMI so far

Thumbbunny · 10/04/2012 03:27

Mind you, I don't understand at least one part of that US story - if both parents are Australian citizens then the baby is an Australian citizen by descent so doesn't need a visa at all, she needs to get her citizenship sorted out by the Australian Embassy (as I had to do with DS who was born in the UK but with an Australian dad - it certainly didn't take months to get that bit done!)

sashh · 10/04/2012 04:05

A car trip to Normandy/Brittany/Vendee does not realistically foresee the need for a Medivac. You can put the casualty in your car and drive them home.

I have a relative who had an emergency appendectomy in France - no insurance, the French hospital told them to get the E111 (it was the paper one at the time) and post it, they then did something to get the bill down to about £50.

Aribura · 10/04/2012 04:27

Spain sounds nice this time of year.

ThatsEnoughHasHadEnough · 10/04/2012 05:03

We claimed £5000 for a family holiday back last year when my mum died very suddenly, to be honest we didn't expect the insurance company to pay, but they did without argument.

We also claimed well over 10K back on pet insurance for our St Bernard over it's lifetime (stomach twist, toe amputation, cardiomyopathy). Our other dogs are insured now and touch wood we have never had to use it, but the reassurance that they will get treatment if needed is worth every penny.

MousyMouse · 10/04/2012 08:03

our family travel insurance costs 60£ per year for european countries. had to use it a couple of times, once for a broken foot (had to travel back home a day later) and stitches for dc (under private care), insurance paid without problems.

lesley33 · 10/04/2012 08:07

YANBU. But for many people travel insurance is not cheap. If you have pre existing conditions it can easily cost a couple of hundred pounds for 1 person. We pay about a hundred pounds for me because of a lung problem I was born with. But I know I need my condition to be covered.

Indith · 10/04/2012 08:28

I would never travel without insurance, even europe, it isn't just getting home if ill/neding a dr to travel with me, it could be repatriation of my dead body. How could I risk passing that expensse on to my family?

All insurance is a gamble but you have to weigh up the risks. when we rented we could have done without contents insurance (we had it though) as frankly if we got broken into the thieves would have struggled to get more than £500 worth of stuff. If the worst happend on holiday though we would n't be able to afford it.

DaisySteiner · 10/04/2012 08:36

Does anybody know whether school trips abroad will have travel insurance organised? This thread got me thinking about ds1 who is going to Europe with school twice in the next couple of months. They won't take them without their EHIC card, but that's not going to be much good if they need to be repatriated is it?! Surely schools should be forced to have insurance covering that kind of thing?

Thumbbunny · 10/04/2012 08:40

Worth checking, Daisy - but I would have thought they would have group cover for that kind of thing - they'd have to, surely?

Nancy66 · 10/04/2012 08:44

Probably because all insurance companies are bastards that never pay out for anything and they just think 'what's the point?'

I got bitten by a dog in the Caribbean a few years ago - needed tetnus, stitches, anti Bs...cost me about £400. Had insurance but they refused to pay because I hadn't reported the incident to the police. When I appealed they sent me a 28 page form to complete so I just gave up which, of course, they were relyng on.

CurrySpice · 10/04/2012 08:46

While I agree with you and always have travel insurance, I can't bring myself to get worked up about it tbh

D0G · 10/04/2012 08:49

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

belgo · 10/04/2012 08:54

If you can't afford the insurance, you can't afford the holiday.

I've seen sob stories from people who have had accidents abroad and need thousands and thousands to get them back to the UK, and then they expect the goodwill of other people to help them.

MrsCampbellBlack · 10/04/2012 09:06

Not all insurance companies are bastards.

As I said my mother's bf had a triple heart bypass in Japan and was in hospital for nearly a month and then flown back 1st Class with a Dr - lord alone knows how much that must have cost.

marriedinwhite · 10/04/2012 09:54

Schools, ime, do have insurance to cover repatriation but rely on the EH11 for any treatment that's required. DS once had a perforated ear-drum in Austria and the standard treatment provided was mindblowing compared to the UK. It is standard there to refer immediately to an ENT consultant who cleaned out the ear, provided advice and reassurance to ds and the member of staff with him and prescribed antibiotics.

squifflybobs · 10/04/2012 09:57

thumbbunny I agree the coverage of pregnancy is a real grey area which I think most people travelling when pregnant are not aware of. I'm surprised these sorts of stories aren't more frequent to be honest. I emigrated when I was 33 weeks pregnant, so did lots of research as we were going via the US for a short holiday on the way. Several insurance companies initially claimed they would cover me for a suspiciously low cost, but when questioned about what would happen if I gave birth prematurely it turned out that I would be covered but not the baby.......

In the end I got a specialist policy which cost several hundred pounds- which probably reflects the real risk of a birth at the stage I was at. This might seem a lot but was a tiny proportion of our relocation costs, and we really wanted our US stopover to see good friends. Annoyingly, I paid about 50% more because I was only going 1 way- I could have returned at 35 weeks for a lot less

Beveridge · 10/04/2012 11:07

Travel insurance companies can be bastards, yes but only if you let them....Read the small print and tell them everything when you're buying it. They are running a business after all, to be fair, so they will try and wriggle out of it if you've left a loophole.

Though standing in a call box on the street in benidorm on the phone to the UK for hours and then listening to the insurance clerk say "hmm, your mother didn't mention she had heart problems when she bought our insurance" (that's because she didn't then! Medical records won out and everything was covered once the paperwork had been transferred to the insurers but it made for a nervous few days for me, on top of having my mum in ICU) wasn't their finest hour in my dealings with them.

Oh, and never mention that the consumption of alcohol was involved in any way with any mishap resulting in medical treatment. Apparently, that's a common loophole. If they ask, you were drinking orange juice all day .

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