To think this is irresponsible and an unfair ask?

[toconclude]

DM (age: mid 80s) has stage 4 cancer. She is not suitable for further treatment. She continues to have as active a life as she can including multiple holidays - 4th one this year is booked. It's not a once in a lifetime trip, just a regular cruise.
Great stuff, keep calm and carry on, etc. I'm right behind that.
However. Her regular travel insurance will no longer cover her. Her proposal is to go uninsured and expect me (as I have savings, sister does not as she spends every thing she earns) to pay if anything goes wrong "and you'll get it back out of my estate".

I'm worried, but she's not, that the cost of (eg being airlifted off a ship) could possibly be more than I actually have - suspect because she knows DH has a pension pot too. I've pointed her to specialist insurers. Silence. Offered to pay the damn premium. Silence. It's some weird thing about 'not wasting money' I think.
Either way, can I absolutely insist she finds her own insurance instead of relying on the Bank of Toconclude?

Braces self for being told how vile and mean and unsupportive I am of dying parent. But honestly, I don't think I am. Just practical.

Totally random comment here - I was once talking to a chap who was in his mid eighties. He said he'd been all over the world on cruises but once he hit eighty he'd been restricted to Europe because of the cost of insurance. Obviously she's booked now but this might be a suggestion for future cruises (fingers crossed that her health holds out so that there are more to come)

My mother is 85, she was brought up to respect male authority so will take advice from random blokes on buses but not carefully researched information from me. I have given up and now have all important advice fronted by DH because then she listens rather than dismissing it out of hand.

if it came to it I could not turn round and say "sorry, can't help". Because I'm sure (the family) would tell themselves they would do it if they could, and they'd think I can because officially I have assets and sis doesn't

I have to wonder what else your family might feel entitled to risk, on the basis that you "have assets" and could afford to bail them out ... given the number of times those assets have been mentioned, that would worry me a lot

OP I think your idea of getting your OH to talk to your DM, armed with costs of insurance from the specialists mentioned here v costs of medevacing/repatriation/hospital costs abroad/diversion of ship, sounds good. OH could also point out to her that if she has told the cruise company she's covered by regular insurance omitting her cancer, all forms of insurance including for broken leg, treatment for D&V etc, could be invalid. Even if she has an E111 card for recoverable costs if the cruise is European, there's still the diversion to port - and Lord help her if the nearest port is in a non-EU country in the Med eg Turkey. If it's not excessive, and your ma is happy carrying a signed DNR form, could you offer to pay the insurance this time only?

The trouble is, it doesn't matter if you agree to this or not, does it? If she goes without insurance and something happens, you and your siblings are going to help because she's your mum, and you're the only one with money.
If your OH talking her through it, and you offering to find the insurance for her, doesn't work, I think I'd consider threatening to phone her travel company and tell them she doesn't have insurance.

If my relative did this, despite being told not to, I think I would refuse to bail them out. It isn't fair on your dh/kids to lose all thrir financial security because someobe else is fundamentally selfish and stupid!

Also something I found out just recently that once you leave port you come under the jurisdiction of whatever country the ship is registered too.

If anything does go seriously wrong you might have to deal with countries that don't have a reasonably good back up system like ours.

Panama, Liberia, Marshall Islands, Bahamas spring to mind.

My disabled partner is 3yrs into remission from stage 4 cancer and we had not been away since she got knocked down (which left her disabled) a number of years ago.
Our best quote was £1640 for a single trip to Europe!
So we excluded all her pre-existing conditions and got a years cover in Europe for the 2 of use for £104

That was bloody stupid simon50. Your whole insurance policy will be null and void, for both of you, for non-disclosure. Rather than saving money, you've wasted £104.

Re: if anything goes wrong "and you'll get it back out of my estate".

How does that work?! Presumably her will is already written and doesn't have a contingency fund for insurance refunds nor will it allocate an additional share to you in case of you shelling out for her medical needs and it may not even come near to covering the cost. That's crazy talk.

I understand she may have a cavalier attitude about such matters now the end is in sight (sorry, don't mean to offend) but she can't dump that responsibility on you ffs.

I used to work in medical repatriations. Straightforward broken-leg ones from Europe to the UK still cost the insurer several thousand.

Anything involving a cruise ship or air ambulance was in the hundreds of thousands. Any case in the US or places with a US type hospital system is in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Bringing your mum home if she falls and breaks her hip could literally cost you your house. She would have to pay in full on discharge in the hospital or they may not let her leave- do you even have that kind of cash to access in an emergency.

I once repatriated a stroke victim from India and the logistics and med-evac equipment was phenomonal and she was months and months waiting in a hospital in India to recuperate enough to survive the air journey - with nurses and doctors on board. Luckily her insurance covered her in a plush hospital as the local pubic one was grim and tbh, she likely would have succumbed to infection.

Another case was a lady in Greece. The hospital had no disposables - so her companion had to buy her tena and continence stuff to use on her. Fuck all nursing staff so her insurer paid for a dedicated nurse for her - just to feed, wash and dress her. She would have been lying in her own filth more or less if she had been uninsured.

If she's insured, she would usually get brought to the nearest private hospital. Or is a private patient in a posh wing. If she's uninsured she's going to be parked in with the locals in their public hospital system and depending on where she's going they can be like a third world hospital and even with you helping financially it could be weeks before she could get moved to a better place. Maybe that's the angle you can jolt her into sense with OP - research how grim these hospitals on her route might be?

simon50 All well and good but nothing went wrong and presumably you weren't depending on family to pay for repatriation of person under medical care or body/diversion to port/treatment on board ship/treatment on land even in EU/medivac/.

Your insurance, had your wife had any problems it would have been invalidated and so would you if either of you had needed hospital treatment.

And you would clearly have been prepared to take a loan on your house for any or all of the above as fees ran from tens to hundreds of thousands as well as dealing with the heartbreak and trying to deal with multiple languages by yourselves as you searched for the right treatment.

Which is the point of the OP's post.

I hope the OP comes back to say she has researched the proper insurance, even if it is expensive, so that her mother can enjoy her 4th holiday this year without landing OP with potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds (if US then a million) if anything untoward should happen. Which monies OP would have to realize immediately from her own funds. Since her mother might need the house to go back to or has a partner who would have first claim on the home, but needed to be repatriated.

OP - offer to pay the insurance.

An estimated 200 people die on cruises of natural causes every year.www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/articles/What-happens-when-someone-dies-on-a-cruise/

wombling you've misunderstood the word excluded. simon didn't say lied by omission, excluded means they've told the insurance company about the conditions,and the insurance company won't pay out for those, but will pay out for problems that occur u related to the declared condition. Say the partner gets injured by something, that's nothing to do with the cancer, so insurance pays. If her cancer deteriorates, that's excluded so she has to sort that out herself.
So, Simon is not bloody stupid. There is a risk of the excluded conditions costing a fortune, but Simons own needs and much of partners are covered by insurance.

It might be a good idea to contact the travel operator your DM is booking with and letting them know the insurance situation regarding her illness. I know its confidential information but it would be highly irresponsible of her to try to travel without it, and as we know contrary to the terms of the cruise operator's policy.

You should not let uninsured travel happen because of the repercussions for you, something you perhaps could explain to her in a way she could understand. Then she could make an informed decision, ideally not to travel, because right now it seems like she has not understood the consequences of what she is planning.

Tbh I don't think you should travel if you have serious illnesses and have excluded them from the insurance. That seems ever so risky, if that illness becomes a problem while you are abroad.

excluded means they've told the insurance company about the conditions,and the insurance company won't pay out for those, but will pay out for problems that occur unrelated to the declared condition

In theory yes, but it's all too easy for insurers to find a way to blame the excluded condition for anything else which might happen

So that fall which broke your leg may have been caused by dizziness due to your (excluded) high blood pressure, etc, etc.

As so often with insurance, it's not always possible to know how they'll handle it until the worst happens