What do you think about MASA insurance?

[Mark2024]

Got invited to a lunch for the MASA seminar. The service sounds pretty good in case one would need an ambulance or helicopter ride. The cost is not that high for a life time membership.

I did a quick search on this site and found a minimal discussion about this subject. It seems there are multiple similar products on the market and MetJet is another one. But Metjet only offer a 5 year plan and asks for special application after 74 years old.

DW and I would be doing a lot of travel in the years to come. As the presenter said "this is just a peace of mind insurance".

From those who have signed up for MASA, have you seen any down side?
From those who use other plan, please let me know the advantages of your plan.

Many thanks. We have some time to cancel and get our money back.

 

[Koolau]

My antenna go up when I hear "life time." Your life time or theirs? Lots of companies try a business model and if it doesn't w*rk, they just go out of business.

I have no other input, so sorry to be negative only. Best luck with this.

 

[braumeister]

I had a MASA membership for a number of years, although I never had to use it (knock on wood). They had a big discount for an organization I belonged to.

They are primarily focused on the US, Caribbean, and Central America region, although their higher cost memberships were said to be worldwide. I think if I were to use them again I would want to get more detailed information about that.

I've been away from travel for the last four years, and I'm starting to look at this topic again.

 

[engineernerd]

We have found it very easy and inexpensive (around $70 per trip for the two of us) to just buy medical-and-evacuation-only trip insurance for each international trip we've made. Some of our trips (cruises to Antarctica, Svalbards, Greenland) have required us to show we've purchased it. Here's where we've done our shopping (squaremouth.com): Travel Insurance - Compare Companies, Quotes & Buy Online

P.S. - the trip insurers assume you want all the cancellation insurance and so on, so you generally have to deselect those coverages.

 

[Sunset]

We just buy medical-and-evacuation only annual insurance which costs just ~$450/yr and has $500K evacuation coverage, which I consider the biggest risk.

Covers any and all trips we take that are 90 days or less each in a year.

 

[Sunset]

OP - What was the cost of the MASA ?

We had an invite from them long ago, I recall thinking if they need to sell in a seminar, it will be like timeshares, and a person could say no until they got down in price that the person accepted. Did that happen ?

 

[Flyfish1]

I had to look up what MASA is.
OK got it.
When I was a younger tough guy fishing in some "interesting areas" I always used Global Rescue.

I know of one CEO who got transported out of a nasty situation in South America and flown to a hospital in the USA. Good enough for me.

 

[OldShooter]

Be careful here. I have researched this type of company and many of them are not "real" insurance companies registered with their state and covered by the state's regulations and guaranty fund. A dead giveaway is that they carefully avoid using the word "insurance" in their advertising, often instead talking about "memberships" and "members." There are enough real, regulated, insurance companies out there that I see no reason to use a sham one.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I'm not a world traveller, but the two times I went to Africa I bought an evacuation policy from Global Rescue. I want to get home to die.

 

[TrvlBug]

Received their invitation to a seminar last week and tossed it. Not interested in a company that sells in this manner.

 

[engineernerd]

I posted my first reply without visiting the MASA website, taking my cue from what you said about travel. But now I see that they are oriented more towards just North America ("MASA covers every ground and air ambulance provider for emergency medical transport anywhere in the United States and Canada").

Your regular health insurance is likely to already cover emergency medical transportation anywhere in the U.S. (but not Canada). Mine does. That leaves the issue of balance billing.

The No Surprises Act prohibits air ambulance services, but not ground ambulance services, from balance billing the patient when it's an emergency. Some states have filled in this gap, see this article: Expanding the No Surprises Act to Protect Consumers from Surprise Ambulance Bills: Map of State Laws

 

[Mark2024]

Thanks for all your comments.

Since we are doing multiple international trip each year. MASA seems a good insurance to have. There are different level of plans. The platinum plan for $39 a month will be mostly for US and Canada.

The key point we spend about $6K for a "life time" member ship is the possibility of Medicare deny the cost of ambulance. Since most of the air and ground emergency companies are not "in plan", and Medicare uses the term "medically necessary" to just if they pay your cost. They said about 16% of the people who purchased the plan have used it it at least once. That is pretty high usage.

Well, DW went to one of the seminar a couple years ago and the same plan was sold for about 4K. I am thinking it would be a lot more a few years down the road.