To think that it should be illegal to go abroad without travel insurance

[AusBoundDD]

A friend has just put a plea for GoFundMe donations on our WhatsApp group as one of her cousins was involved in a car crash whilst on holiday in Spain, ending up in hospital with multiple bad fractures. He was uninsured so the family have been left unable to pay for his hefty ambulance fees, surgery, hospital stay etc. To make matters worse he isn’t fit to fly commercially and instead needs to be medically evacuated home to the UK via private air ambulance.

It feels like a yearly occurrence - someone begging for help to get their relative home after they’ve been stupid/naive enough to leave the country without adequate travel insurance. Surely it should be like having your passport - you can’t board a plane or gain entry to a country abroad without it?!

Yes, and also how many people would actually think they should declare using them!

In the exact same ways that other travel documents are. Passports, visas, for some countries you even have to be able to show your bank balance upon entry in order for them to confirm that you are able to support yourself for the entirety of your stay. It’s really not a tricky question, nor would it be that hard.
As for punishment - no insurance = unable to board your flight/get turned away at the border. Simple

Oh, so you want every country to make it illegal. The UK could only make it illegal for people coming here.

I still think YABU.

Without reading any replies, yes I agree. It would save a lot of trouble.

I think the point is that they can afford to pay for it if things go wrong. So for someone in a financial position to pay for atuff, should things go wrong then why shouldn't they go abroad?

The OPs question was whether insurance should be compulsory. If someone can't get insurance for whatever reason then why should that stop them from doing what they want to do?

It's not like car insurance where there is a third party to consider. You don't need to take out fully comp car insurance.

That's the point this poster was making.

You can't mandate insurance for this sort of thing. How could that possibly work? You can only legislatite against covering third parties.

I've just had our insurance company ring me today after filling in the medical questionnaire and answering yes to investigations and yes to a hospital stay.

They will cover me, but not for anything to do with my chest which is what I am undergoing investigation for. Drs are querying COPD, which they would cover me for if diagnosed. They have sent me a link for insurers who might possibly insure for investigations I'm going to have a look and see what's what.

I may just bite the bullet though and not be insured for anything chesty as it covers other existing medical conditions for both DH and I and also breakdown for our motorhome.

I would have this issue as my travelling companion would not want to declare things she thought were irrelevant, such as anxiety. I would not travel with her if she refused.

Those never covered you needing to be repatriated if you were knocked down by a car and had a broken leg so needed more than one seat on the plane home or needed an air ambulance to return you to the UK because you had a serious head injury. The EHIC only covered you for the equivalent of the NHS in the country you were visiting.

Yeah right. It's a con until you need it.

I cannot see it being able to be practical to introduce without a significant number of people being unable to travel abroad again. No politician would want to implement such a change and deny some people their fortnight being unpleasant to Spanish or other people.

Well, yes, it's designed to cover the risk of a suitcase of averagely priced clothes going missing in transit, not replace jewellery, thousand pound cameras, three thousand pound laptops, iPads, Apple Watches, iPhones and everything else that people still try and claim for without any proof of ever owning them.

I was always taken by the £1997 claims per person including 4 year olds all carried in a £19,99 suitcase from Argos and the £300 of clothes + eight grand of gold jewellery and £400 of milk, margarine and prepacked ham in a two grand Louis Vuitton case claims when I dealt with travel insurance claims.

Kind of enjoyed the paying the massive medical bills, though. Not that it was nice for the people concerned, but it was satisfying to know that they weren't going to have 3am phone calls from the hospital debt collection department every day for the next 10 years - even if they sometimes got quite irate that the trainers and jeans that were thrown away by the hospital ER had an excess of £20 applied to them, it never seemed a good time to point out that I'd just authorised £104,395.34 at the then exchange rate for three nights in hospital, so being down twenty quid and having had a shitty time wasn't actually the absolute worst thing that could have happened to them.

Been OK so far.

Literally no words. None.

That applies to all insurance. But you still need it anyway, just in case.

That GoFundMe site needs shutting down, there is no way to prove these funds are going to who they say they are. They're making a fortune off people who fall for any old sob story. And they're like bandwagons for people to jump on, getting mass shares on social media and there's a tawdry entertainment in watching the sum increase.

As for people who travel without insurance, the travel industry should make it a condition of travel or add it to the cost of the holiday. I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone needing medical repatriation without insurance.

So does my family member and he doesn't travel abroad any more. It's tough, but it's life.

He can't afford to buy the level of cover he needs, but he knows the actual cost of receiving treatment if he had a heart attack abroad would bankrupt him.

Airlines can refuse boarding if you don’t have proof of insurance. They can and do random checks.
im with you op, begging msgs on social media and alike.
if his family own their home they could be saying bye to that have to remortgage.

My gut reaction is yes, of course people shouldn't be allowed to travel without it because its just part of being sage while travelling.

But then..no...because people are allowed to be fucking stupid and as long as the aren't hurting others, it's their prerogative.

Then you start getting to nanny state. It seems bonkers people are allowed to buy vapes and cigarettes or even processed meat when they are known carcinogens, so where do you draw the line?

There's a world of difference between someone smoking a vape or ciggie, or eating processed meat; and someone going to another country with no travel insurance, and then expecting other people to fund their stupid decision when they get the inevitable 6 figure sum medical bill!

Can't believe you're suggesting the 2 scenarios are even remotely the same!

That's wrong. You pay in France and then receive a cheque covering the rest once back home. It's astoundingly efficient.

I completely get your point re wealthy relative with uninsurarable health conditions.

I think it would be more accurate to say he is 'self-insured', a real thing if you can afford to take the loss if the potentially insurable event occurs. I 'self insured' for contents out of choice at one point in my life - I had nothing valuable and reasonable savings.

Other posters might be less confused about your relative's situation if they understood he is acting as his own insurer so why should he be legally prevented from travelling?

I wonder what people did before Go Fund Me type fund raising!

I know people travel more in latter years but I remember when people bought insurance, or not, at the travel agents when they booked their holiday. I think some people didn't even bother with travel insurance 20-30+ years ago!

When we've been on cruises they've often asked to see our insurance, hasn't been asked the last couple of times though.

It probably is too nanny state / people who eat stupid and don’t take exercise are expecting me to fund their diabetes health care and amputations - which is even worse than a go fund me which I can ignore

I do despair when people expect others to fund them not paying out for decent insurance whether it be travel or pet to name two.
There are some crappy insurance firms. With no existing health conditions, decent travel insurance isn't expensive. I had breast cancer and am on preventative blood thinners due to treatment causing a DVT in my arm. Last year, and this we've used Insurewith, it cost £80 for me, DP and DD. On top of a week away, it's not much.
People need to take responsibility, there are so many insurers out there who can provide cover. My (now deceased) FIL, who had all sorts of health conditions got cover for a trip to Australia.

It's utterly shit but how would he pay for his treatment in the event of a serious emergency followed by repatriation by air ambulance? That could cost hundreds of thousands of pounds

I can remember buying insurance for the holiday when I booked it at the travel agent in the 70s and 80s and just buying the one with the holiday, I think you had to have it or show you had another insurance but insurance was a lot simpler in those days, and there wasn't the worry that you may have forgotten that boil you had antibiotics for a number of years ago.