This is an actuarial post, so ignore if you only interested in The Archers
Yes, helena, I just searched for your name on MN (sorry if that sounds stalkerish, it was just meant to be a quick way to settle this) and can more or less guess the companies your DH has worked for - or at least come up with a short enough list that makes me think that our paths haven't crossed much, so he's safe from being "outed" by me.
On topic of calculators - no, I think we tend not to carry them: we're a bit beyond adding up columns of figures, and our models need at least access to a spreadsheet. And like mathematicians, some of us like doing the more theoretical stuff where numbers hardly appear. I was in one talk at conference today, where the speaker put up a slide with an extremely complicated formula that more or less filled the slide (multi-dimensional probability distribution incorporating integration and plenty more). He said: "I'm just putting this up there for you to look at later, if you are one of those actuaries who likes working these things out in your spare time . I know I am." This is a community where we like difficult maths! (But self-aware enough to know that it's a bit geeky and crucially that we need to relate it to the real world and communicate the underlying ideas in plain English to management etc).
Basketz - your question is really one about heterogeneity in risk groups, and is really a question for a pricing actuary. But yes, some in our profession do consult medical experts, and where it matters we will identify whether there are medical conditions that we should allow for in our pricing. But this would also be dependent on underwriters, ie those whose role it is to say put individuals into broad classes set by the pricing actuaries, based on asking appropriate questions. You can imagine that a wealthy person applying for a large life insurance policy might be subject to detailed underwriting, where the underwriters would use manuals of medical conditions to come up with any loadings in the premium they charge (or decline to provide cover altogether). But for travel insurance it's not going to be economic to be so precise, and people will get lumped together. In your case, it may just be worth shopping around, to see if different insurers treat you differently.