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?

But as above- this only captures some travellers, and why should airlines ensure that passengers have insurance if it’s not a legal requirement of the landing country?
what about people who travel by road, boat, foot? Who continuously cross unmanned borders?!

and ask I asked above- if i.e. puru are happy to let uninsured tourists in, what can the uk government do? Why would they even want to do anything?!
what about borderless countries accessed on road or foot from other countries? Who makes sure a British person passing from Russia to Mongolia by foot has travel insurance then?

As I've explained upthread that would be pointless in cases like this as having travel insurance policy isn't the same as having a travel insurance policy that will pay out as you actually get sick. In order for any policy to actually be valid when push came to shove you have to declare the state of your health. So anyone who doesn't want to pay the real cost of insuring themselves would just take out a cheap policy and travel regardless.

Surely she should just have started a Go Fund Me for the insurance premium?

Dd has a long list of pre existing health conditions inc blood clots. I recently paid £255 for three weeks in Canada for insurance for her. A friend has always said to me buy an annual plan and I resisted thinking no way would it be affordable. Well just had a quote of £190 worldwide travel inc Canada and USA.

maybe insurance for copd for this woman would be more (just seen it was 3k) but I agree if you want to holiday that’s the price. I know someone recently who paid 5k insurance for two weeks in the USA! She paid it. Said she wouldn’t have gone without it. I do understand though that it’s shit when your health makes things unaffordable/more expensive.

dd probably couldn’t afford the insurance, her “holiday” is actually travelling to see her boyfriend who lives in Canada. I pay her insurance for her as her health isn’t her fault. Not everyone will have someone who can pay for them though. I’d guess that Dd would maybe take a gamble if I wasn’t paying.

A friend died while on a business trip abroad (totally unexpected, she was a healthy woman in her mid 30s). Luckily she had travel insurance . It meant that a relative could go to the country she was visiting, identify the body, deal with the authorities and arrange repatriation of her body to the UK.
In a similar vein people chose not to spend money on buildings and contents insurance and then suffer a house fire and set up funding pages to get their belongings replaced.

Yeh but it doesn’t affect your life does it…I just don’t read further into an article ….but it doesn’t offend me that they are doing it🤷‍♀️

I have more sympathy for young healthy people as the thought of falling ill or having an accident on holiday probably never crosses their mind. Their insurance may be cheaper but they are also likely to have much less money. Risk taking is also more likely in the young than in the elderly.

This woman was obviously a serious, life-threatening illness waiting to happen. She could afford to pay for a 4 week holiday at Disney in Florida for 3 adults and 1 child, having been to Florida 20 times already. She could have reduced the duration of the trip to be able to afford this essential health insurance. I feel very sorry for her daughter, who has had to fly out to Florida, despite not going on the holiday and she is the one trying to raise the money to bring her mum home. I have less sympathy for her mum who took a calculated risk and lost.

Border / Country Entry requirement - proof of insurance 🤷‍♀️
No insurance no entry

The quote of £3000-6000 is almost certainly because the woman's travel destination was the USA, which has astronomical health costs. I suspect, for all of you saying that you can't afford to travel if that's what it costs for those with medical conditions, that if you want to go somewhere in Europe it will be a lot less. Get a quote and find out - it's really not that hard. Go to moneysupermarket.com and do a bit of research.

But if this idiotic woman had paid £6000 for travel insurance for this trip, it would've been a bargain, wouldn't it?! Her family is going to be faced with a bill running into the hundreds of thousands. Six grand is a drop in the ocean compared to that. I think it's actually a very reasonable premium for someone with such complex needs as this woman has. But it's like anything else in life - you do or buy what you can afford. It's not up to others to subsidise you so you can do whatever you want.

Who makes all the countries in the world do this?

We had a holiday booked, insurance for my daughter was just under 3k for a week holiday, we cancelled the holiday considering it was costing more for the insurance. I had my family say why not just go without everything would be fine etc and we want you all there. I still cancelled and thankfully I did, she then had a 5 week hospital admission which was around the time we would’ve been on holiday.

Never worth the risk imo. I wouldn’t be inclined to donate to that cause either, play silly games, win silly prizes!

She's been more than "a bit silly".
Travel insurance should be costed as part of the overall holiday. This woman knew what she was doing and on this occasion it but her on the arse. I obviously hope she pulls through but she deserves the consequences of her behaviour.

Having just googled this sad story I actually feel sorry for her daughter who is finding herself in this awful situation and probably has absolutely no other options. The primary focus of her fundraising is to get her mother home and currently that sounds unlikely.

The medical bills will be vast and I have no idea how aggressively the hospital will press for this but I imagine they are ruthless. The stress of that knowledge must be huge.

To those saying that £3000 is ridiculous, surely the facts of this case reflect exactly why Insurance is so expensive for those who are most likely to fall ill.

Im not donating but I wish them well and hope they get their mother home soon.

She could afford it though. She went to Florida for 4 weeks, could have gone for 2 weeks and easily paid for insurance too.

She's 76 with COPD, atrial fibrillation, uses 3 inhalers and needed a wheelchair to get about Disney. You don't need to be an actuary to work out she has a pretty high risk of needing medical attention spending a month in America.

How would that work? What about all the people entitled to use the healthcare where they are going? What about all.the people who'd have insurance that doesn't actually cover them? Who's doing the checking? What about all the times people don't need to go through border control at all?

Quite. To be honest at this age with those conditions if i couldn’t have afforded the insurance I might have gone anyway but on the strict understanding i wouldn’t seek medical help/have anything done for me. Though I guess it gets complicated if you’re too ill to fly home but haven’t died yet. Or if you’re in hospital waiting to die, not having treatment but still racking up bills just by taking up a bed space.

If I remember rightly there was a time when you couldn't book a flight or package holiday without proving you had insurance and then legislation changed making it illegal for airlines and holiday companies to do that.

I don't mind them as I would never pay into one. Like someone said above her daughter doesn't have the funds to pay her medical bills and evidently some people don't mind paying as she's got the full amount now I think.

You do not remember correctly

That wasn’t a legal requirement that was just so the travel agent could flog you (unsuitable, unregulated) insurance

I don't understand why this bothers so many people. It's not like we're being forced to pay for it. Literally if you don't want to pay, you don't.

Being eligible to use healthcare when abroad doesn't cover your repatriation though, which is usually the biggest cost.

Yes, it wouldn't solve the problem of not having the right insurance or insurance being in valid if not declaring pre existing conditions, but at least it's something. Just as people can still tax their cars or avoid being caught by ANPR cameras when they, personally, aren't insured, but the car is. We've got to start somewhere.

Just because something wouldn't achieve 100% success doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

Having to have at least a travel policy number would at least make most people think about it, raise awareness of the issues, etc., and that would be a good thing, even if some people still weren't actually covered.

@AquaPeer I didn't say it was a legal requirement. I said that companies used to be able to refuse to sell their products without insurance and it was this practice that was made illegal.

I know why they did it. If you refused to buy their insurance you had to prove you'd bought it elsewhere by providing documentation so many people did buy their insurance without going elsewhere as it was easier and less faff.

It’s madness not to especially in a place like America. The bill will be tens of thousands.

It’s nothing, not something. That’s why all the countries in the world weren’t waiting on the brains of MN to solve this non existent problem 😂