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 it was made illegal because travel agents were unregulated and untrained/ uneducated, selling insurance, a regulated product.
It was completely inappropriate. It also, obvious, did nothing to solve the problem in hand.

@AquaPeer I just stated a fact as per my original post. I do totally understand all the why's and wherefore of the situation. I'm certainly not advocating a return to that situation.

Although it wouldn't surprise me one day as part of an Esta/Visa application to the US they make you having insurance a requirement to be granted a Visa.

They must be fed up of all the people like the lady in this case running up huge medical bills which will never be paid. From what I've read the family seem to be wanting money to fly her back but they may not release her until they've paid off the huge medical bills she's already incurred.

No, I don't want anything and I have no proposals.

I explained why I responded to your post.

Insurance wasn't regulated back in the day, though. The regulation is a relatively new thing going back 2-3 decades. Prior to that, selling insurance, pensions, etc was pretty much unregulated or very lightly regulated, hence all the mis-selling claims re endowments, mortgages, pensions, etc.

I started work in the early 80s in a small accountancy practice. The owners ran "side line" businesses, one being an insurance agency, another being a hire purchase company, alongside being a building society branch. We weren't qualified regulated under the Financial Services Act as it didn't exist back then. I didn't personally get involved with HP or general insurance, but I certainly did a few applications for clients wanting pensions or mortgages, and that was without any qualifications nor experience/training in those areas.

It all changed, if I remember rightly around the late 80s. I remember a mad scramble by the partners of the firm to create lots of files for all the clients we'd done work for in the areas of insurance, pensions, mortgages, HP, etc., to make up files showing "know your client", risk assessments, due diligence, etc so that we'd be compliant when the new rules/law came into force.

So, depends how far you go back, but I suspect when travel agents tried to sell travel insurance, there weren't the laws/rules surrounding it as there are today. It was probably because the Financial Services Act came into force, that travel agents/travel companies stopped doing it because they'd have need all their staff involved to be trained and qualified and the commissions they'd have made wouldn't have justified that cost.

But even the USA hasn’t done anything about this. So either they don’t care, or can’t find a workable solution that forces all their tourists to purchase travel insurance before they are allowed to enter

Well exactly

@CountTo10

*Although it wouldn't surprise me one day as part of an Esta/Visa application to the US they make you having insurance a requirement to be granted a Visa.

Yes, I agree. It would be down to individual countries to impose their own border/entry requirements. And yes, the US could easily make valid travel insurance a condition of them granting an ESTA/VISA.

As you say, it would depend on how seriously each country regarded the problem as to how they deal with it. But as we often see, countries do tend to copy each other so if a few countries started to insist on it, it could easily become the norm in other countries too!

I feel for the family of the lady in question. I’d be furious if my mum decided to do that. What will happen now - I guess they won’t disconnect her and let her die in the US but every day the costs are mounting. I saw that the cost of her going on a normal commercial flight with oxygen and assistance was 7k which they have raised. But they have no chance of clearing the hospital bills as well. And currently the mum has pneumonia as well and is too unwell to get on a flight. Jesus Christ. How monumentally stupid. I think if you get conditions like that you accept that you can’t travel.

I remember a thread on here a while back about a similar situation. An elderly parent was either choosing to travel without insurance or had already done so and something had happened. The poor family had tried to stop her.
I don't get the impression in this case that the family she travelled with were unaware. Could be wrong of course.

The only time I've donated to one of these was when the deadbeat divorced dad actually died abroad and hadn't bothered with insurance because of pre-existing liver problems due to alcoholism. His poor kids (18 and 21) were lumbered with getting his body repatriated.

Yes I’ve just looked on the go fund me and the 50k they are raising is purely for the air ambulance. How are they going to pay the hundreds of thousands the hospital will cost? If they couldn’t afford 3k on insurance!

For the people saying that if people don’t like it then don’t donate that’s not quite the point.

The fact is that it’s become an accepted norm now to assume that you don’t have to pay for things, all you need is to set up.a begging fund and the gullible public will come running.

And often the people who donate to these things are people who themselves don’t have much to give. They think of themselves as not being able to afford treatment and before they know it they’re handing over their cash.

Nobody feels they need to take responsibility any more. Just start a gofundme and people will donate if you make the sob story sad enough.

Exactly this.

Who donates money to a complete stranger anyway. I personally couldn’t give a fuck what happens to them if I don’t know them.

Of course it’s not become acceptable not to pay for things and set to a go fund me. Medical bills abroad are as old as time. What do you think they do, put you in prison? Of course it’s stressful but no way are 90% of the go fund mes going too come even close to paying for the medical bills, it’s completely ineffective. Clearly the people return to the uk somehow (the turkey paraglider girl had a charity pay for med vac) then when you are on it of the country the £1m you owe a Florida hospital takes a step back in priority rather 😆 you don’t think people actually pay this stuff off with go fund mes?

Can any anybody explain what will happen with the US medical bills?
Clearly they aren't going to be able to pay them before she leaves. What happens next once the patient has left the country?

To all those saying the insurance was criminally expensive.... well that is how insurance works, the higher the risk the more the premium.
As can now be seen, she was much more likely to get sick than a young, fit, 20-something who likely could have got insurance for 20 quid.

If you take the risk, you pay the price when things go wrong - you don't set up a GFM for other people to pay, just because you were too tight to pay travel insurance.
And don't give me the shit about how it was too expensive... no one made her go on a 4 week holiday to Florida, cut your cloth... and all that.

It’s just a normal debt, they chase it in the usual way. I doubt you can use the British legal system to enforce a debt from the USA though and even so- to be honest- why would someone in her age or in her condition really care if she was made bankrupt or had a charge put on her house?

I had a (small, insured) medical bill in New York and when they sent the invoice to my house in London it said very clearly across the bottom
“please note we do not pursue debt outside of the USA”

so not sure of the background to that comment but clearly there is an issue with getting debts from abroad

@ScupperedbytheSea · Today 09:46

To those saying that £3k is a ridiculous amount. The women had chronic conditions and was travelling to the most medically expensive country in the world for a month.

The chances of her needing medical treatment / hospitalisation were probably pretty high. Flying long haul is notorious for spreading viruses, so having COPD makes you massively vulnerable.

Well then she shouldn't have gone then.

As for the (few) posters saying 'well I have this condition and that condition and the other condition, should I not go abroad then because I can't get medical insurance - or can't afford it?'

Well no frankly. You shouldn't. And if you do, and you get landed with a massive medical bill, that's on you. Deal with it.

@MandyFriend · Today 09:48

I am tired of funding other people's bad decisions. When people decide not to get insurance either because it's too expensive or they can't be bothered then they come unstuck, I have no sympathy for them!

This. ^ So many entitled whiny people honestly! Frothing and moaning, at situations that THEY have created.

Yeah seeing as she did get ill, £3,000 is about 5% of what the total bill will end up being. And there was a huge risk.

A person has multiple medical conditions > high insurance premium for a reason . They’re more likely to become ill. Surely it’s not rocket science to work that out?
And if you can’t afford the insurance you can’t afford the holiday.

Why repatriate a body FGS, have a direct cremation there, and a service back home with the urn in pride of place. Those are my instructions if anything should happen (i.e. I die stone dead) on my travels.

I do realise that legalities have to happen, but still... And I have annual insurance in case anyone is wondering.

Exactly this. Don't go off on holiday abroad with all your multiple health conditions, withOUT insurance, and then expect others to cough up if you become ill, and have a medical bill costing 10s of 1000s of pounds!

I wouldn't donate in this case. I would for a child whose parents failed to arrange insurance because untreated injuries or sickness can be life-altering and the child deserves a helping hand.

Well obviously you don’t have to repatriate a body. Who is going to make you? It’s a choice because you want to bring them home, not a requirement