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?

So far they have raised 14k. If you Google Emma Bunting gofundme you will find it.

Someone I know has copd but omits it from her travel insurance so gets cheap insurance so she can book a holiday . I believe you can't book a package holiday without it . One day it will bite him on the arse .

Stupid, ignorant and irresponsible.

Just don't give to it.

Bloody idiocy but you don't have to foot the bill, so why does it matter to you?

When you're reasonably healthy, it's easy to buy insurance and difficult to imagine a scenario in which you wouldn't be insurable, yet it does happen. And no, this doesn't mean you aren't well enough to travel.

It does mean that your risk of needing expensive interventions is elevated, and if you want someone else (the insurer) to bear that risk rather than yourself then they're going to want a hefty premium.

I understand it is frustrating. Insurance when you have serious pre-existing conditions makes insurance expensive, but travelling without it is immensely stupid.

I have found it very difficult to get insurance for a forthcoming holiday and the cost is astronomical (thousands) We have had to build it in to the cost of the trip. However I am under no illusions that despite declaring medical conditions if I have to make a claim the company will leave no stone unturned to find a way not to pay out, maybe a forgotten course of antibiotics or visit for reassurance over some symptom. That is their duty to the company and shareholders. However I will not start a GoFundMe. Not sure what will happen but if I die I suppose they'll have to dispose of me somehow

I've never understood the "if in general" attitude. It's not just about your general state of health.

What if you were killed in a random accident eg a falling rock off a cliff on the beach? Do you know how much it would cost your family to have your body flown home?

Don't be silly. It would not be a police matter.

Presumably you would just not get a visa without insurance, making travel to the US impossible.

@LostittoBostik

It would probably be cheaper to be cremated abroad and have the ashes flown home ?

I don't have any sympathy for people who don't bother to get travel insurance. Of course it can be much more expensive if you have pre-existing medical conditions if you use mainstream insurance companies, but there are specialist companies who will insure you at much more reasonable rates. When I was going through cancer treatment, I got various quotes for travel insurance - some companies just excluded anything cancer related, some gave me ridiculously high quotes, but once I contacted a couple of specialists, I was able to get a policy which covered everything and which was cheaper than our previous policies before my diagnosis.

Something special is a week in Disney land Paris, not four weeks in Florida. There was a older man, similar to this woman who lives locally. He was saying how he was going to take a chance and really didn't care about the consequences of not having insurance. He got to Turkey and basically drank himself into a heart attack/stroke. It's meant remortgages within his family, they are raging (but they knew he didn't have insurance). The same family are anti immigration and often say the state of the NHS is because of people wanting free healthcare. The irony is lost on them.

Not sure if that's an option - luckily it's not something I've had to handle.

I don't understand why those saying 3k for travel insurance is "criminal." They've decided she was high risk to insure and quoted appropriately. Turns out they were bang on the money and the 3k is a drop in the ocean compared to the thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) her care and repatriation will cost now. Those bills would have been covered by insurance. The insurance company would have been hugely out of pocket with their 3k.

They have crude algorithms which work on a simple totting up of conditions rather than actual risk. So well-controlled asthma adds to the premium just as much as poorly controlled asthma with a history of hospital admissions. Underactive thyroid adds the same amount. A high proportion of older people have both underactive thyroid and high blood pressure, so that’s 3 medications straight away and makes it very difficult to find insurance. When your insurance costs more than your entire holiday, it’s tempting to skip or to lie.

For years I had to go on holiday knowing I wasn’t insured if my father’s illness made us cancel - couldn’t find any insurance that covered curtailment of holiday if the close relative whose illness caused it was over 80.

When I was in my 50s paying something like £12 a trip, I had no idea insurance could suddenly become so difficult and so expensive.

I've had to claim a couple of times - eg for the cost of a doctor visit and prescription abroad - and it's always been extremely easy. They also have a helpline to give you advice and support as well as record what's happening with them while you're there.

????? You want every country in the world which issues visas to check if people from the UK have valid travel insurance? How do you propose they be made to do this? What about travel to countries that don't require visas?

@MereDintofPandiculation that's just not true - which is the exact reason they ask about hospital admissions. If you have admissions, your premium is higher

Every country already does this for people who need visas.

So people want cheaper insurance for higher risk people ...... then the insurance premiums for low risk people will go up ... is that what people want ?

But I can see that mind set when you’re young and in good health. Chances are your son and his girlfriend would be fine. This woman was 78 and flying long haul. The insurance cost she was quoted was 3k due to all her complex problems. It’s absolutely bonkers she went ahead without it.

I think some people feel invincible. My sister has stage 4 cancer and wanted to travel here to spend time in London as a bucket list activity.

They felt like it was fine because she felt ok at the time. I was trying to explain about the effects of flying and being in confined space with lots of germs for a long haul, and whether travel insurance would cover her at all.

When I was young I never thought about travel insurance. But as I got older and developed medical conditions, it was more clear that I could end up in trouble.

Not getting insurance impacts the family and friends more so than that person choosing not to buy it. I do feel for the family and i understand they are probably panicking about costs while watching their parent seriously ill.

Its utterly unfair on them from their relative and irresponsible when you have such impactful medical conditions ( my mum died of similar).

It wasn’t a holiday of a lifetime she had been many many times before and i’m sorry she should of factored in her insurance in the cost of her trip. Maybe if she would of mentioned it to family they could of helped her? it would of been cheaper than the bills they are facing now. Such a sad situation.

No, I don't really care. It was your assumption that the police would have to be involved that prompted my response.

It was the "Is that what you want? IS IT!!! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!?" approach, without considering other possibilities.

My relatives, who are not British or EU or American citizens, cannot visit the UK without travel insurance.