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?

Exactly !

If you can afford to go away on a very expensive holiday for FOUR WEEKS without buying travel insurance then you can afford to go away for two weeks with travel insurance, or go to a less expensive destination that its easier to get back from (e.g. Disneyland paris)

It's not like going to Disney is a human right ffs.

Why do you care? It doesn't affect you. If you don't agree with them, don't look and don't donate.

Worry about the things that affect you and yours.

It would seem simple enough.
Probably will never happen though as no other person is affected by not having insurance. The reason motor insurance is so important is not for the driver but injuring others.

@LikeWhoUsesTypewritersAnyway I can see mine being £3000, I've not looked into it
That bad is subjective - I'm immunocompromised but day to day it doesn't affect me - however I can't get life insurance or critical illness cover

I was diagnosed age 32 so from that you mean I shouldn't ever go away again?

Our neighbours are in their 80’s, they travel loads - family in Australia and Europe. They don’t take out insurance as it’s expensive. Bit different as they would be staying with family but I think its a big risk, they say at their age they've nothing to lose!

How do you know whether you agree or not if you don't look?

Do you care about anything in the World that doesn't directly affect "you and yours?"

Mumsnet would be a boring place if people didn't have an opinion on a wide variety of subjects.

I have zero sympathy - the woman (and her family) are idiotic.

But I suspect that a quote of $3k for a 76 year old woman, for 4 weeks, in expensive USA, wouldn't even have included her pre-existing respiratory conditions in the cover, so they may have had to resort to the bank of GoFundMe even if she had taken out insurance.

To be perfectly honest, I’m sick of the whole go fund me concept. Raising money just because someone’s family member died? Why? Raising money for people’s funerals? When my parents died we had to pay for the funerals ourselves, we didn’t get help from anyone and we didn’t expect it either!

Should airlines check passengers have health insurance before they're allowed to book a ticket?

It'd be of benefit to the UK too.

Yes. It should be like car insurance

It annoys me. She knew the risk.

Insurance is a fundamental factor in a holiday that's as essential as flights etc, not optional. We always buy premium for places like the States, because care can cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars if something is really serious.

My dad had all sorts of travel plans for his retirement. He retired and bam! Heart attack and prostate cancer. Luckily he is now cancer free and his heart condition is under control, but his travel insurance is very high. If the quotes are not affordable, he will not travel, not just decide to wing it, FFS.

I was furious with my son when he jetted off to East Asia with no insurance! It didn’t even occur to him-even though the only way you can access decent healthcare is privately and state care isn’t available for foreigners. He just never thought it would happen to him. I found a specialist broker who would insure him after date of travel and it cost £90-a couple of weeks worldwide cover would’ve cost about £20. Nothing happened, thank goodness, but I reckoned it was worth me shelling out for peace of mind. He’s learnt to never do that again.

There is the requirement to provide passport details (advance passenger information). Perhaps extend to providing insurance details.

You would need to have some method of checking that people aren't putting in details that are false or will expire before the end of the holiday. Not sure how you would achieve that without a massive overhead, but I'm sure others know more.

Obviously not since she would’ve filled out a visa form for travel to USA and didn’t have insurance

We have a local grifter who regularly sets up these pages; GFM, Buy Me a Coffee etc. One of her fund raisers was to appeal fund a ‘humanitarian trip’ to a well known tourist country in the Middle East. Oh, and whilst I’m there I’d like my daughter to go swimming with dolphins at our all inclusive resort in the Red Sea and btw, my son needs appropriate clothing for the climate too.

Meanwhile, she proudly posts videos on TikTok of her applying Charlotte Tilbury and Huda Beauty products that are in no way sponsored by these companies.

But she still managed to convince fools to subsidise her to the tune of over £6k on GFM. The Buy Me a Coffee rakes in a pretty tidy sum too.

Some people feel entitled to go wherever they want and do (or not do) whatever they want with complete disregard for the potential consequences for themselves or anything else.

Most people don't really understand the concept of 'risk' (I.e. likelihood x impact).

Given that most healthcare in the UK is free at the point of need, most people have absolutely no idea how expensive it is to provide.

But she still managed to convince fools to subsidise her to the tune of over £6k on GFM. The Buy Me a Coffee rakes in a pretty tidy sum too.

Some people are absolute marks.

or part of the ESTA process and a requirement for each trip or ESTA revoked on arrival and sent back.

I just don't think it would help in cases like this.

So I have a chronic health condition. Usually it's under control but occasionally it flares up. This year it's flared up resulting in two hospital stays (1 an emergency admission) and one lot of surgery.

If I take out travel insurance now it would be about £60 for 2 weeks in Spain if I dont declare my health condition/recent history and many multiples of that if I do. If I wanted health insurance for a US holiday that would be thousands.

If, like this woman, I'm not the sort of person that cares about being properly insured but wants the holiday, I'd just take out the £60 insurance and show that at the check in desk. But, if it came to it, I wouldn't actually be covered because I hadn't disclosed the true state of my health.

Ironically we were planning a family trip to New York next year (a really big deal to us). Now we will be staying in the UK instead, until I'm 12 months clear of any hospital stays and it may be 3 years before I can afford to go to the States.

I agree. Denied boarding or entry to the Country if you do not have adequate insurance cover.

My darling Dad went on holiday a few months before he passed away. He was undergoing cancer treatment but he paid the insanely high premium to ensure he had insurance.

I knew he did it as he knew if anything happened, I would have been the one to foot the bill.

People are utterly selfish to travel without insurances, especially if they are already unwell.

I'd never travel without insurance and If I couldn't afford the insurance I wouldn't travel so I don't think you're being unreasonable. However
people have the right to be bloody idiots in all sorts of ways, we shouldn't mandate travel insurance as a PP suggested and if people want to be idiots and fund someone else's lack of insurance that's up to them too.

A month in Disney? £20k plus food and other expenses. She could have afforded the insurance. She chose not to pay it.

This!

TBH I don't judge people with pre-existing conditions because what's the alternative - that they just never go on holiday? Not fair at all, quite a disablist attitude tbh! Insurance companies are kind of scams anyway, in that they are happy to take your money but usually fight any payouts, so I'm never going to be on their side.