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

I delayed booking to go to a wedding last year because I was waiting for test results and therefore would not have been able to get insurance. (In fact, I finished up paying £400 to be seen privately - cheaper than going abroad without insurance and falling ill.)

Necessity, if you can’t afford comprehensive insurance don’t go abroad. I will qualify that and say it’s quite different nipping to Paris or Amsterdam for a weekend without insurance and I do understand why someone with complex health issues might make a decision to not have coverage because it’s so high, but anywhere my dad couldn’t get to in a day to pick me up in theory you need insurance. We have a variety of health issues and are middle aged - it costs £10 a month through the bank, all conditions covered.

Your colleague is an idiot.

She's an idiot for not having travel insurance and doubly so for saying "boomer mentality"

@Monty36 it's not really a scandal, you are being charged according to your risk profile, unless you think lower risk people should subsidise higher risk people's travel insurance?

Some of the very high prices may be a "fuck off" price. The generic insurers often do not want to insure complex people but don't want to refuse a quote. If your needs a complex you are better off going through a specialist broker.

If your passport was in your bag that was stolen, on your return to the airport to fly home, you’d have to pay for a later flight and potentially stay in a hotel while new documents were sorted. That could get expensive.
Replacing a stolen phone is costly too.

I agree. A relative of mine (previously healthy) was taken ill in France. He was airlifted to hospital, very sick. They did tests and discovered it was cancer, and pneumonia. He had to stay in hospital for a few weeks until he was stable enough to be brought home by air ambulance. The total cost was over £300K and when he died soon after, his house had to be sold to pay the bill, leaving his poor wife destitute.

People don’t realise that an EHIC card doesn’t really cover much more than a broken arm or a course of antibiotics. They think that because it’s France, they’re covered for everything.

When I was young and invincible, I used to travel without insurance.

Now I'm old and have children, so I always have health insurance. I can't imagine something happening to one of my children and not having that backup.

Not only do I always have insurance, I would also never contribute to a crowd fund for a feckless idiot who went abroad without it.

It riles me when people go on holiday without insurance (or don’t read the policy properly), take ill and then set up a crowd funding to pay for treatment/repatriation

100% need insurance! Its so easy and cheap (for most people) that I despair when I see these griffters starting a go fund me, because they didn’t want to pay £9.80 to cover them on their 2 week all inclusive to Spain.

Anyone who brings children abroad without insurance is stupid and neglectful.

As some previous posters have said, never travel to the US without travel insurance, and declare everything for your policy. There are plenty of hospitals in the US who will not treat you, unless you are literally dying in front of them, without insurance, so you wouldn't even get past reception.

Just getting an ambulance can cost you thousands of dollars. Surgery and/or hospital stay and/or repatriation can cost you your house.

It's not an age thing, it's a lack of knowledge/stupidity thing. Just don't do it. Even if your travel insurance costs you £200, pay it!

I called it a scandal not because I don’t appreciate risk. If the companies do not want to insure people with pre existing medical conditions they should not advertise themselves in the way they do.
They are very happy to insure people who cost a lot.
They don’t really know much about the conditions they do insure. Not really.
I don’t think they would survive for long without the high price clients. But the prices are too high.

And what would have happened if the insurance had rejected the claim?

I don’t mean that maliciously. But insurance finding a way to refuse payment isn’t unheard off, even when people did the best they could.
So then what?

Id personally would have much less issue of paying automatically if you knew you’d be covered with no quibble.

I agree. My DH has cancer, under control but not curable. Our travel insurance worldwide is £1800 with Insurancewith. Please don’t quote prices like £3k as for the vast majority of people it’s nothing like this.

Necessity! Wouldn’t book a holiday without it.

I agree there.

And these are the same people who will then tell you your claim isn’t valid because xyz…..

There is a lack of transparency and regulations there.
eg we shouldn’t need to declare ALL issues including those dating back 15 years ago.
We shouldn’t need to include things that aren’t relevant anymore (eg you’ve had treatment and you’re now cured)
etc etc…

She's abusing her children by penny-pinching and putting their lives at risk.

I am the family's insurance-whisperer. I sort out policies for everyone. For travel, pre-existing conditions and activities mean shopping around for adequate cover. I don't choose on price, though comparison sites are useful for identifying the providers who are in our niche so cost is managed. It is usually necessary to read actual policies before choosing, as even standard levels of cover vary, for example swimming in the sea is not always covered.

This!

Which bank are you with?

I can't vote because I think sometimes it's more nuanced than people just not wanting to buy it. Some people genuinely can't get insurance, even through specialist insurers. Some would say they should spend their life stuck where they currently are; I disagree.

I have a pretty basic phone that would cost me less than £200 to replace. I've never lost a phone in my life, so I consider the risk to be very low. I don't use it to pay for stuff, and everything important on it is backed up in the cloud. If the worst happened and it was nicked, I'd just buy a cheap replacement and a local SIM, and I'd be fine until I got home. I've never had phone insurance, and over the course of the nearly 30 years I've owned a phone, that's probably saved me thousands, so I'm willing to take the hit on that now.

I'm also a dual national with 2 passports, so the risk of losing them both is virtually non-existent.

She’s a twit, pure and simple. she’ll be one of those crowdfunding if things go wrong. I donate to loads of crowdfunding pages but never those.

Why don’t you show her this thread or some of those crowdfunding pages.

You could probably report her to HR for being ageist as well if you were feeling petty 😂

Its ridiculous to go without one. Ive just come back from mediterranean holiday. We had to go and see the doctor for dc for a swimmers ear. You wouldnt want to be worried about not affording a dr when in a different country with children. Or even by yourself. I was struck with bird flu in asia many years ago. Not fun if you have to wonder affroding treatment.