Do you think holiday insurance is a necessity or a luxury?

[faithfultoGeorgeMichael]

Where I live there are an increasing number of crowd funders every year for people who have an accident on holiday and have no insurance. I have always thought this was a minority of people willing to accept this risk but yesterday I spoke to a younger colleague (I am 51, she is 32) who said that no one she knows ever buys insurance and it is seen as a foolish waste of money to her and her friends.

She is off to Indonesia for a month in August with her children - with no insurance!

YABU: I would go abroad without insurance
YANBU I would only go abroad if I had insurance

Yeah. Nobody thinks they need it until they need it.

Ah, that makes sense. That is usually included with the booking though.
This thread reads like you need to take out a specific policy.

I have been hours away from home and needed NHS care, and they arranged transport home. No insurance needed.

Companies like RAC, AA, etc bring your car home if can’t drive it, if you are a member and have the appropriate cover so worth having that

You are lucky. Not so lucky for a family member who was in ITU on a ventilator 250miles from home. He waited 16 weeks for the NHS to fly him home. He lives in England (south east) and was taken ill in Scotland. they had tried and failed to arrange transport multiple times. However had said he would have been home in 48hrs after he was medically fit to fly if we had insurance it cost thousands of pounds for family by his bedside. We did look at privately flying him home- however was going to cost in the region of £300,000....

So I need insurance for daytrips now?

Because the Spanish didn’t want to keep paying for his treatment? That happens!

That could happen if you went out for the day as pp said

It must depend on where you live then because that wasn't an option for me.

My point is that never in a million years would I have predicted that what happened to me would end up costing me money. Fortunately I have annual cover because we typically go to Europe with the car a couple of times a year so we were covered for it.

It's a personal choice of course but now I just get a annual policy to auto renew.

I was on about UK trips though. Why would you need health insurance to go out in the UK?

We has package insurance on our last trip. Paid for iteself in spades when trains were cancelled due to cyclone damage and we needed additonal hotels and flights to get back on track.

And "£300k" to transfer a patient. One what planet? (or to what planet). There is no way someone on the same small island (UK) is going to cost that much to be transferred.
Patient transfers happen all the time, and they are not costing more than the average price of a a house. The maths does not math here.

It depends where you go and how many citizenships you hold. For me, healthcare in the country I most often travel to is extremely affordable (even private care for foreigners), so I actually prefer to self insure (ie. take the risk that needing care is extremely low and, if it was needed, I could afford to pay for it). Last year, I actually paid a fortune for insurance, as it was a multi-country holiday. For the first time in my entire life, the flight was cancelled. I didn't end up claiming anything on the insurance because it was just too bloody difficult. So that was over £500 I could have saved myself...

As I said for one of my family members who was on holiday in Scotland became ill. He got stuck because of getting someone back to England on a ventilator is costly. It happened after he was medically fit to travel for 16 weeks. It was difficult for the hospital to arrange repatriation to his local hospital. However everyone else on the unit who has insurance (normally from other countries) was repatriated within 48hrs by their travel insurance. Yes I now have travel insurance for UK trips for this reason- as the probably £50-£100 max it would have cost for the policy would have saved £15,000 of hotel fees and restaurant costs, and would have helped repatriate quicker. So yes I will have a yearly eu and UK travel insurance policy now!! If that can save family money its worth it (about £400 for 3 of us with one having pre existing conditions).

I’m afraid if DH ended up in hospital many miles away he would just have to be a bed blocker until they brought him home. He wouldn’t want me traipsing up there either. Same if it was me

Diverting a plane is pretty expensive too...

I literally just explained it in my previous post, that you responded to. I was just explaining that I happened to have cover for the issues I had in the UK which were totally unexpected.

It's not just health insurance, it's travel insurance. Travel insurance goes way beyond heath cover

But costs will mount up. Even if you think you can afford to pay if something happens, you probably can’t .
In America it could add up to many thousands of pounds.So, even if you are rich you would be stupid not to have insurance!

Exactly. You don't know if you can afford it until you get the bill. Also, define 'afford' I could probably suck a few thousand if I had to, but it would leave a bitter taste in my mouth if it could have been avoided with a £50 insurance premium.

its dickhead mentality... and then expecting everyone else to pay when hermione gets hit by a moped on day 3 and she cant afford healthcare or repatriation...

No. People are just offering their experiences. You can do what you want.

Shit, ive just realised I havent got it for the three day city break we are currently on!

But you'd have to be VERY rich to be able to afford hospitalisation and repatriation costs from the US, for example.

I haven't insured my horses for vets fees for many years now because a) the one and only claim I ever made for vets fees was refused until I got the ombudsman involved, hugely stressful and b) I can afford to pay vets bills. But no way would I risk travelling abroad without comprehensive travel insurance.

I have a heart condition after having heart attacks, i also have other medical issues. My travel insurance for a week in the med is less than £30/ It is peanuts.

I'd consider it a necessity. We actually get year-round travel insurance as a freebie with DP's bank account now, but before that we always took out basic insurance for a trip overseas. It was never expensive at all.

I know it can be a lot more expensive if you have certain conditions though, and I assume it's a lot more expensive if you have to cover kids on it. But I would have thought that it was even more important to have then!