To wonder why people don't buy travel insurance?

[EveningHare]

If you can afford a holiday then you should not look at travel insurance as an optional extra

It's vital that you have it, anything could happen and if you don't have lots of money in the bank, how would you pay for it? Go fund me?

You can't afford not to have it - although it isn't as cheap as some people think it is, if you have pre-existing medical conditions, even if you then agree to exclude those.

I know of a family whose child died on the other side of the world and they had to have the funeral there as they had no means of flying the body home. How sad is that.

As I said, you can't afford not to have it.

a friend was taken ill on a flight to South America, can't remember which country. The plane was met by a private ambulance and because she didn't have enough cash on her to pay them they wheeled her to a cash point before they took her to hospital. luckily she had insurance for the rest of her stay in hospital, and got a receipt from the ambulance people so claimed that back too, but it was a nasty experience.

Another friends child was taken ill in Cuba, I know Cuba is supposed to have an amazing health service, but she was horrified by the local hospital the hotel referred her to but luckily persuaded her insurance company to authorise a transfer to an (excellent) private hospital.

I had to call a doctor out when I was deep in rural India recently, he came to the hotel, prescribed (dug about in a plastic bag!) some antibiotics and rehydrating horse pills that made me throw up , I had insurance but didn't claim because the total cost came to less than £7.00 I'm still not sure he WAS a doctor!! Someone else on the same trip was sent to the local private clinic in a chauffeur driven car accompanied by the hotels under manager, different hotel,I clearly chose the wrong one to be poorly in!

Seriously? How much money did they expect her to get out of the cash point? You can only get a few hundred quid anyway. I doubt that made a dent.

That’s not even an insurance issue if you’re expected to have the cash aside so you can pay immediately

I always take it for holidays abroad, but not UK holidays.

and how do you get home from, say, a weekender in bournemouth, after you had a car crash (assuming minor, but inpleasant injuries, luggage destroyed, car totalled...)?

Car covered (fully comp) under my own insurance, replacement vehicle included, luggage under home contents insurance. If I was in a friend's car and the accident was their fault, I'd be claiming on their insurance!

Yes seriously sprinkle. It was a private ambulance and they understandably wanted the cost of their services paid upfront. I can't remember the cost, probably the equivalent of a couple of hundred quid. It became an insurance issue because she was able to claim it back. If she hadn't had insurance it would have been added to the many thousands her hospital stay and the cost of her partner flying out to accompany her home .

Lots of countries have very limited government funded ambulance facilities, so rely on private companies doing what our ambulance service does for free.

Here in Guernsey we are not part of the NHS so if you travel to Guernsey, you should have travel insurance or you will be paying if you fall sick. An ambulance ride will set you back about £150 and a visit to A&E varies depending on the time of day and whether or not it's a weekend but it could be quite a few hundred pounds. As a local resident, we have to pay these costs unless we have insurance that covers it but not all medical insurers will cover it.

We always have it but last year we had a flight cancelled that meant we had to drive 17 hours in a hire car costing £1600. Insurance decided we weren't covered. Really made me question what I had paid for

I can feel Nemesis organising the Furies to pay me a visit. (I think that's the correct reference - if not, I'll suffer the consequences of my hubris for trying to be smart).

Grrrrr why don’t you have insurance against posting dodgy references online? Pah! What’s the world coming to? Everything should be compulsory (or banned)

We had flight cancellation/airline failure cover included in our travel insurance when Monarch went bust 2 days before we were due to travel last year, but they also claimed we weren't covered, for reasons I don't totally understand, it seems that, despite having the cover, it only was valid in very limited circumstances, making it hardly worth the paper it was written on.

Anyway, we got the money back for the replacement flights back from our credit card that we had paid for the flights on. The extra cost of the more expensive flights booked at the last minute was deemed a 'consequential loss'.

m0ther if you paid for the cancelled flight on a credit card, is it worth a claim? I don't know if there is a time limit, but it could be as long as 6 years if there is. Have a look at the moneysavingexpert advice.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/section75-protect-your-purchases

You’re telling me you couldn’t have found £17 for a single trip insurance?

This, and the other posts like it really annoy me. 17 pounds for insurance? I WISH! My family travel insurance for a single trip in Europe last year was 188 quid, and that was the cheapest quote and was a good bit less than the year before.

I have complex health problems and I need specialist companies to cover me. It’s costs several hundred but when budgeting for a holiday, it’s planned into the cost. It means we can’t go away that often but it would be selfish if I fell ill or had an accident abroad, putting my family through additional stress. It’s bad enough being unwell abroad without worrying about putting yourself and/or your family through financial hardship.

The major costs if things go wrong is medical. This is not a worry in the UK.

Because they’re a bit thick and don’t think through that other folk coukd be left to deal with their thoughtlessness/ignorance/greed if something goes wrong or they die on holiday.

I used to work for the medical energy company you call when it all goes wrong - I would never travel without it. The costs can be huge even for a relatively simple issue. Worse if you need to change flights, extra hotels etc. It's just not worth it. In America it can be over 100,000. It drives me mad when people pul the sympathy vote trying to raise money to sort it when they chose not to get insurance.

I’d be really worried about travelling without insurance. I once read a news story about a couple who hit a cyclist in the USA and ended up getting sued. Because they had no travel insurance, they had no help with legal fees or liability cover, so were facing being sued for millions. I can’t imagine how stressful that would be.

Not to mention, when I broke a toe while abroad, I was saved from a bill of several hundred euros. That was a tiny, stupid injury caused by a trip that could have been really costly.

Barbara we got the cost of our monarch flights back via flight insurance of £2.50 that we didn't even realise we'd paid when we booked through a 3rd party. But it cost us an extra £200 to rebook. Are you saying if we'd claimed through the credit card they'd have given us the £200 as well?

I needed to call on a v cheap policy to pay out £7k in hospital fees and repatriation, would never not have insurance even if only for medical benefits. On a flight last week, a family boarded with a kid with temp of 40 degrees and had to be met by paramedics on landing, no one allowed to disembark in case what she had was contagious (deemed suspected meningitis). They didn’t consult a doctor abroad as no insurance.

The idea that if you don’t get it you can’t afford a holiday is bizarre - sometimes you can only just afford the holiday!

That's exactly what an acquaintance said, but their "dire financial situation" didn't stop them spending most of their time in the bar, when the price of a couple of drinks a day could have paid for insurance

It didn't stop the whining, either, when her DH broke his ankle and they selfishly expected someone else to pay

Yeah well she sounds like a bit of a dick puzzled. I would’ve spent the money in the bar but not whinged if I’d broken my ankle

I’d be really worried about travelling without insurance. I once read a news story about a couple who hit a cyclist in the USA and ended up getting sued. Because they had no travel insurance, they had no help with legal fees or liability cover, so were facing being sued for millions. I can’t imagine how stressful that would be.

These anecdotes are all a bit far fetched. I mean they’re back in the U.K. presumably? They’re not going to be internationally sued are they?

I have to travel to the States, for very personal reasons that I don't want to go into here.

I also have four pre-existing conditions. The cost of insurance for me, due to this and the time periods I spend there, would be upwards of £600.00
So I travel without insurance and I am very risk averse while I am there. But it does worry me.
Maybe I should crowd fund before I go, so that I don't have to do it afterwards.

It’s what I always think when people post on Facebook begging for money to treat people taken sick on holiday or money to bring them home when they die.

Always have travel cover. Although most illnesses abroad I've been able to manage with OTC or my own first aid kit, I have had relatives with serious injuries (requiring hospital visit abroad), a friend who stayed in the hospital all week while we were on holiday (cost him hundreds, and it was only spain), I had to have a course of post-exposure disease shots after an accident abroad (several hospital visits), on the same trip someone else was hospitalised overnight with an IV (she was covered thankfully), a relative had to be choppered off a mountain on one of his trips (would have costs thousands), a neighbour had to stay abroad in hospital for 6 months following a serious heart attack (would have cost thousands), and I've also known people who have died on holiday and had to be shipped back (again, would have cost the families thousands).

So, although day to day I don't think it's a huge risk, actually... - I'm young and healthy - shit does happen and if shit happens outside your control you really don't want to have a massive bill that you could have avoided.

I was just talking about this with my husband this morning! We had my husband's health insurance from his home country until he recently cancelled it since he doesn't work there anymore. That covered my kids too and it's really the only place we travel now.

Now, however, we have a son with a heart condition so we were discussing options for insurance when we next head over to see the grandparents. There's no way I would travel without it now.

I was admitted to hospital once in Sicily and managed to get that on the EHIC. Then I needed treatment for a nasty bite in China, thankfully I had insurance for that. No idea what would have happened otherwise.