To be sick of people starting to fund me pages when they go on holiday without travel insurance and can’t afford medical bills when they end up in hospital?

[AngeloMysterioso]

A woman with chronic pulmonary disease and mobility issues couldn’t afford the travel insurance she needed for her four week holiday to Disney World in Florida with her sons and grandson. So she went anyway, without any travel insurance, and you can guess what happens next… she caught covid and flu, then developed pneumonia, and is now in a critical condition in hospital.

And of course, her family has set up a go fund me to go begging to the public to cover the considerable financial cost of this woman’s utter foolishness.

AIBU to think if you can’t afford the travel insurance, you don’t go on the fucking holiday?? Especially if you have pre-existing conditions which make you particularly susceptible to falling seriously ill?

I agree, her insurance ad probably expensive due to her conditions so she took a stupid risk.

It’s modern life sadly - accept no responsibility for your actions and blame others when it goes tits up. It is getting ridiculous but more fool the people that enable it by donating 🤷‍♀️.

Happens all the time with Aussies travelling to Bali. Mild annoyance when I see it but I just don’t donate! A friend of a friend had a major motorcycle accident recently, head on with a pole while drunk. The GoFundMe is up to like 20k for “medical expenses”. Unsurprisingly we have free quality healthcare here in Australia so it’s just a money grab.

It winds me up to. I do understand that occasionally something might happen where someone purchased insurance and then maybe the cover doesn’t cover astronomical costs but even then I am sceptical. Whenever I book holiday insurance I go for the £3 million or similar cover - just to be on the safe side.
One holiday my son was 4 and he was vomiting and listless, we took him to the hospital and they kept him in overnight, gave him fluids, did some tests etc no scans or procedures and the bill for one day was 1200 euros. So these things can totally add up. We paid the first £50 and everything else was covered. BECAUSE WE HAD HOLIDAY INSURANCE!!!

Well who is contributing to all these ? That's my question!

I read in the daily fail that the insurance would have cost 3,000 dollars.....so now she's stuck abroad. Shouldn't have gone in the first place. If you can't afford the insurance you can't afford the holiday..... simple

OK well:
Would I do it - no
Is it an incredibly risky thing to do - yes
Would I advise others to skimp on health insurance-no
Would I donate in these circumstances- also no.

But beyond that, no one has to give to a Go Fund Me so I guess it's up to them.

It should be made illegal to travel without insurance.

Its not high on my list of priorities to donate to.

Horrible thing to happen but the financial burden is something that could have been lessened
People need to take personal responsibility and taking out travel insurance is one of those responsibilities.

I'd say YABU, purely because they don't impact you. You don't have to donate.

Its obviiusly stupid, but there are plenty people who do massively stupid things thst we have no choice but to pay for through our taxes and NHS. From morbid obesity, to having kids when they cant afford to look after them, playing dangerous sports and getting hurt, to binge drinking, to being a dodgy politician. I could go on.

The grand majority of people, if not everyone to some extent, makes dumb decisions that impact others. This, at least, doesn't impact anyone else unless they choose it too- maybe apart from the woman's immediate family. If you're her immediate family then you'd be reasonable to be pissed. If you're not, then you're probably overreacting a bit to feel much about it compared to what does impact you.

Surely everyone knows that even if in general you don't bother with holiday insurance, the USA is the one place you absolutely do? How utterly foolish.

Probably people who are also daft enough to not take out insurance.

Insurance premiums can be extremely high for some pre-existing medical conditions. However, if a person can't afford them, then they shouldn't be travelling. The US in particular is renowned for having expensive, private medical care. This particular woman's family now are faced with spiraling medical costs, all because their Mother was stupid and selfish enough to not take out medical insurance.

This lady has a list of conditions prior to trraveling. Yanbu. I agree travel insurance should be compulsory if you travel.

You don’t have to contribute or spend time reading about them though. Getting “sick of them” is ridiculous

So just don’t donate. It’s weird to get angry about something that needn’t affect you in the slightest.

You really want the police to waste their time and our money policing this? Why? How would it be punished?
Also, it's not as simple as "having insurance". You need suitable insurance which covers what you're doing and to whom you've disclosed every pre existing condition and doctors visit you've had in the past x years. Are the police going to check that too?

A family member of mine has recently been diagnosed with a heart condition. They disclosed this to their travel insurance company as they had 2 trips booked next year, the premiums will increase to the level that they can no longer travel so they have had to cancel their holidays. Travelling without insurance with a known health condition is idiotic.

Firstly totally irresponsible.

But having bought holiday insurance myself I can tell you that they can take the piss. Things we declared from the last 24 months and paid an extra few quid for a visit to the dentist (for a filling), chronic migraine, a sprained ankle and sciatica. Granted, the last one is probably a risk but the rest... 🤷

Agree, my child injured themselves on holiday accidentally in October. Bill was 2.5k for a visit to the hospital. Got it back a week after we put the claim in when home. Id of felt sick if we didn't have insurance, I'd never risk it. We went away a couple of years ago with my sister and her family and she never bothered and said "no one will hurt themselves". Such a stupid, irresponsible point of view.

Florida isn’t cheap, especially for 4 weeks, she just didn’t want to pay it. However it’s not her who has done the go fund me it’s her family, who could have perhaps checked she had insurance before going, it is her own responsibility bur her kids left trying to fix it, v selfish tbh.
although at the end of the day no one HAS to donate to help her get home etc I won’t be, I’ve been to Florida many times, always taken out insurance especially in USA it’s not worth the risk if something were to happen.

It's questionable whether travel insurance would cover those pre-existing conditions - they might well have been excluded from the policy.

However, a four week holiday to Disney World cannot be cheap - I know someone who paid £10k for ten days, and that was about eight years ago. If it is the case that cover was offered, but she couldn't afford it, taking a shorter holiday might have been the answer.

Why?

It's not worth the risk imo.
I've had 2 friends injured abroad, one broke her leg in China and was covered by insurance, one who ended up paralysed after an accident. He was on a temp visa over there anyways but when coming back to UK, the luggage handlers damaged his specialised wheelchair and this wasn't fully covered by insurance and he was offered a much shitter version. The one he was offered would have made him more reliant on others, didn't do half the stuff his had done and was less comfortable. He had to start a GFM to try and cover the cost of the one that was damaged as the airline basically said "not my problem".

Also what about the rich people who can afford to pay out of pocket for medical expenses? Why would you make something a legal obligation that only poor people need?

also how can you make other countries who want tourism and couldn’t care less whether tourists can pay legal bills change their legal system so they don’t let uninsured people in?

very colonial to expect you can somehow set laws in other countries, especially when it’s just to avoid the outrage of a go fund me 🙄