When did you become fearful of health issues when traveling

[brett]

We have spent five winters in Thailand ( and other SE Asian countries). Lots of time in non touristy areas well away from regional centres. The flight bothers us more than the thought of sudden illness. Same issue this fall in Greece.

We might think twice if we had a serious pre-existing issue. But we do not, so we go where we want to go.

 

[kcowan]

Last year, I had a prescription change to AFIB medication within 6 months of our annual policy renewal. So I travelled to Mexico without insurance. Luckily no problem. This year, I resigned myself to the higher costs of insurance as a lifestyle choice.

It is still cheaper than what our American friends pay for Medicare Part D. I am very carefull while walking and climbing at home and abroad. Next year, it is Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Madrid and Lisbon. 77 yo.

Had a friend get dumped off a cruise in Argentina for a gall bladder attack. It ruined the rest of their cruise but at least they had insurance.

 

[Nemo2]

Haven't got there yet.

My 'not yet' was perhaps a millisecond from being relatively athletic at 76, and then slurring my words with a suspected TIA.....at that instant 'not yet' becomes retroactive.

 

[grasshopper]

We have only bought evac and medical for our African trip. Oh those pesky elephants, and free booze.

 

[Teacher Terry]

Fortunately so far I have only fallen at home and not on vacation)

 

[tmm99]

I was just thinking the other day about how the "pre-existing conditions" work with travel insurance. If say, you had a heart attack and had bypass surgery to fix the blockage that caused the heart attack, and your condition is under control now (drugs to lower cholesterol, for example), are you considered cured? If you had a heart attack again when you're traveling, is the previous heart attack considered a pre-existing condition, or not? How about a stroke? How about diabetes? Before Obamacare, my diabetic friend who had a heart attack years ago was considered uninsurable for regular health insurance unless he got his insurance through work, so I was wondering what would happen to someone like that if he wanted to travel abroad.

 

[Nemo2]

I was just thinking the other day about how the "pre-existing conditions" work with travel insurance.

https://www.lowestrates.ca/news/kitchener-man-denied-travel-insurance-brain-tumour-thailand

A Kitchener resident diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour is stranded in Thailand awaiting the final word from his travel insurance company after his coverage was initially denied because he reported flu-like symptoms, including a mild headache, when he went to the emergency room in Moncton a month ago.

Alex Witmer, 30, was about a month in to a six-week trip in Thailand with his wife, Jennifer Witmer, when he started to experience a severe migraine.

“He got a migraine that didn’t go away,” Jennifer Witmer told CTV News Toronto on Monday. “It just got bad.”

The husband and wife went to the hospital and after Alex underwent some scans, doctors diagnosed him with a cancerous brain tumour. The pain he was experiencing was a result of the pressure building inside his brain. He was told he required brain surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation as soon as possible.

The couple then opened a claim with their travel insurance company, Allianz.

". . . there was no issue we just got the go ahead yesterday,” Jennifer told CTV News Toronto. “They were sending an air ambulance.”

But a few hours later, Allianz called Jennifer back and said the couple’s claim had been cancelled because a month ago, Alex went to the emergency room in Moncton, where the couple has been living for the last five years, for flu-like symptoms — one of which was a mild headache.

Insurance companies are in the business of selling policies, not paying claims.

 

[brett]

We are careful but we are not about to stay home.

Two seniors in our community were hit by a car while they were crossing in a well marked crosswalk. Both died.

We travel with out of country medical. Fortunately we have only had to use it once. The top items on our bucket list for the next year or so are Thailand (again), lots of Mexico, Morocco, and for me only India. We are always concerned about healthcare but there is a bucket list to contend with.

 

[Bestwifeever]

Not fearful at all but fully expected to fall off a coaster bike during the three days I and three other late 60s to 70ish people used them as transportation last week. Almost missing a connecting flight was the most stressful part of the trip . I think we’ll keep traveling a few more years. We do get med/evac travel insurance these days, and we get premium economy now, and pay for further upgrades if offered at checkin.

Took my 80+-year-old relatives to Ireland last year and they seemed a little fearful. They rarely leave their familiar surroundings so that was likely part of it, but they are healthy and mobile—they hustled right up those Cliffs of Moher. We should have done it a few years ago.

My good friends who are also early 80s travel quite a bit but they have hired drivers the past few years. They just got back from Africa. They also are healthy and mobile and have the funds for a nice level of travel. I think some people restrict travel as not being worth the cost if they have stopped enjoying the experience.

 

[brett]

If we end up in Thailand next month we will be meeting up with our friends from the UK. They are 78 and 80 respectively. They travel independently each winter in southern Thailand and in the fall it is Crete for them.

 

[mystang52]

https://www.lowestrates.ca/news/kitchener-man-denied-travel-insurance-brain-tumour-thailand



Insurance companies are in the business of selling policies, not paying claims.

The problem with anecdotes like this is that it may just be...an anecdote.
To the original question, most of these travel policies do cover pre-existing as long as certain conditions are met, primarily that the the insurance is bought within 2, maybe 3, weeks of initial trip deposit. I've filed 2 claims with trip insurance over the years. One, frankly, took longer than it should have but they did pay. The most recent, this past June, was paid very quickly.

 

[tmm99]

https://www.lowestrates.ca/news/kitchener-man-denied-travel-insurance-brain-tumour-thailand



Insurance companies are in the business of selling policies, not paying claims.

Nemo,

You may be happy to find out that this guy did get air-lifted although only after the media started following up on the issue.

 

[N02L84ER]

So far, we have not been fearful for our health. Last year was the first year we sprung for the insurance and it is because I fear my father or MIL will pass right before or while we are out of the country. Don't even know for sure if the insurance will pay in those situations.

 

[Nemo2]

Nemo,

You may be happy to find out that this guy did get air-lifted although only after the media started following up on the issue.

Yes, we figured the negative publicity outweighed the cost of repatriation.

 

[marko]

Spent half my life working in third world countries and never gave it a thought.

After RE, I met an older guy who said he liked to go places that had good hospitals nearby and I thought he was crazy. Then about 10 years ago I started coming down with a few issues (sepsis, kidney stones, gall bladder, UTIs) and I understood what he meant.

DW and I used to spend two weeks every year on an unpopulated Caribbean island where the help all left at 10PM and you were on your own until they all came back by boat at 6AM the next day.

Having had DW cart me to our local hospital at 3AM a few times, the idea of being so isolated no longer appeals to me, mostly because DW would kill me herself if we were in that predicament and I ruined her vacation.

 

[Lsbcal]

There is really a lot to see in the developed world where health care is reasonably available. I find developed world travel to be challenging enough and just want to learn and enjoy.

 

[sengsational]

You might be better off, financially, to get care right in the country your visiting than to have one of our upstanding health institutions placing you in in observations status
then billing you, personally, for $25,000, even though you should be covered by Medicare.

 

[travelover]

For me it was this summer. I had a retinal tear in Scotland. Had it been a full detachment, it would have had to be treated immediately as the blood flow is cut off to the detached part and blindness follows. If this had happened on one of my travels hours up the river by canoe in Peru or in the back country of Kenya, I'd have been SOL.

So, yea, I'm thinking twice about going to anywhere too remote. Traveling with a top notch outfit like Road Scholar gives me some confidence that a timely evacuation could be pulled off.

 

[Sunset]

Just today, DW and I were talking about travel, and sometimes even with evac insurance the situation means a person is stuck.
If a person has a heart attack on a transatlatic cruise , it could be 3 or 5 days before the ship is close enough to airlift.
Just recently in the news, a plane flight from LAX turned back, a 10yr old died from a heart attack on the plane.

But I'm not going to sit at home, with the ambulance on speed dial waiting.

 

[athena53]

I started buying travel insurance when DH and I were traveling- he had ongoing medical issues and had some balance problems, which made him a fall risk. Fortunately, the only real issue we had was when he had a severe attack of gout in Alaska, so Medicare covered everything.

I then realized that even though I was very healthy and 15 years younger, I was the one climbing around in volcanoes and on glaciers, snorkeling off Alaska, taking hikes with names like "Boulder Bash" and Stuff Happens. So, even though DH is gone I buy it for myself.

<snip>Then a good friend fell on a cruise we took together where she was summarily thrown off the ship in nowhere, Alaska. 2 days to patch together flights to get home for surgery. Now i think about it a lot.

Just a few weeks ago a friend got the message that his brother (70 years old, plus or minus) had had a transient ischemic attack on a Caribbean cruise and was in a hospital in St. Kitts. He was single, traveling with friends and I assumed he told them to stay on the ship. My friend was the only one with a valid passport who could drop everything and bring him home. (Brother had lost his reading skills, needed a wheel chair and got confused easily.) When my friend got there his brother had been in a hospital room for 4 days with no phone, TV or radio and no PT. Apparently he had some sort of insurance but I'm not sure what it's going to cover- he had to pay $1,000 when he left the hospital.

Brother is recovering but with a 3 week trip to the Galapagos, Macchu Picchu and Bolivia coming up I'm seriously considering an evacuation policy through MedJet Assist in addition to the travel coverage I already purchased. They send a private jet with an RN and take you back to any hospital in the US that you specify. Many evacuation policies just take you to the nearest "acceptable" facility, which may be what happened to my friend's brother.

 

[folivier]

That brings up a very good point. In lots of popular tourist destinations the medical facilities are very limited and not up to par of a city. Throw in the complications of being on an island, language barrier, and other issues and a simple emergency can get out of hand very quickly. We've been in some areas where we wouldn't even think of staying overnight in a hospital. Get a med evac. policy, preferably one that covers you and another to travel with you, at the very least.

 

[marko]

Then again, I have a friend who lives in Texas' Hill Country about 1.5 hours outside of Austin. After a terrible accident at home he had to be Medivac'd out via helicopter.

So even in what you'd think of as a fairly developed suburb of Austin TX, USA you can be at risk. If they had waited for an ambulance he'd have died.

My own experience with sepsis was one where if had to travel an hour or more to get to a hospital I likely wouldn't be here typing away.

 

[Nemo2]

My own experience with sepsis was one where if had to travel an hour or more to get to a hospital I likely wouldn't be here typing away.

I was already in our local hospital when sepsis hit...I've never been that close to death.

I know I repeat myself ad infinitum, but I'm compelled to stress that it doesn't matter how good you feel two seconds before something happens.......when I saw the ship's doctor, (with the suspected TIA), his first words were "Wow, you don't look 76", (I didn't feel it either).

Fact remains that, although younger people get hit with 'stuff', the odds go up, (or down, whichever way you look at it), the older you get......regardless of how good you feel now, and the shape you're in, or think you're in.

 

[jollystomper]

We began thinking of health issues when traveling when we began taking family vacations. One of our children had bad asthma and more than one vacation involved some time at a local hospital when an attack occurred that could not be controlled.

These days we look at it less as a "health" issue but more from an "accident" issue. We are in good health and feel that we are more likely to have health related issues due to accidents versus illness. So that does make us more cautious in terms of the types of vacations we take, particularly since at this age we do not heal as fast.

 

[Lsbcal]

You guys are scaring me.