Travel In$urance?

We book all our hotels with a refundable rate. We mostly fly Delta and airfare is not refundable but you do get a credit good for a year. And if you book with miles as we had done for a trip we had to cancel last year, your miles go back into your account and the cash portion you have to pay is refunded.

We add up all of the things that aren't refundable and insure that much. We're mainly buying for the health insurance coverage as we are on Medicare and our supplemental has very limited coverage outside the country.

We use tripinsuracestore.com to buy. The people there are very helpful.

The more important thing is evacuation insurance. A friend broke her leg a few years ago in Italy and had to be brought home on a medical evacuation flight which would've cost $95,000 if she hadn't had insurance. We have a Medjet 5 year policy. There is an AARP discount. Medjet will evacuate you to the hospital of your choice, not just the nearest "acceptable" facility. You don't have to be overseas, it covers you anywhere over 150 miles from home.

I've traveled on average 3 times a year for over 20 years. I book refundable rooms most of the time. Never booked a refundable plane ticket, but always one i could change for about $200. My Medical in the past did cover me through reimbursement but I always figured that wouldn't be easy, so I got a basic policy with low coverage for minor emergencies. Allianz pays direct to the provider if you use one of theirs and ther are 100's all over Europe. Then for the big stuff, evacuation insurance.

My losses have been in the hundreds of dollars while more comprehensive coverage would have been in the thousands of dollars. But if this is a one time trip, I might think differently as you don't have many trips to average it out.

Our credit card provides trip cancellation insurance, so anything we charged to the card but could not get reimbursed if the trip must be canceled due to medical reasons is reimbursed. We’ve used it a couple times when illness or injury forced us to cancel. However, now that Delta provides essentially “store credit” if you cancel a nonrefundable ticket they won’t reimburse the airfare. You just have to use the credit to travel some other time. If you don’t have that benefit through a card it’s probably worth buying a cancellation policy when you make the airfare or bike tour payments.

Hello,

We have recent experience with this. We had our main tickets on Delta (non-refundable), but our inter-European one way flights were booked on KLM and Aegean. I decided to buy refundable tickets for those flights because I thought maybe we would find cheaper tickets later or want to adjust our days a bit in those cities.

Well, we ended up cancelling the trip on Tuesday. KLM has already deposited the refund. Aegean is still processing the refund and they will charge us a fee of 23 Euros each. Delta has already deposited the refund. (We were able to get a refund on those non-refundable Delta tickets because they cancelled one leg of that trip and had to book us on a smaller plane with a 20 minutes different departure time.)

So, the airlines we used refunded our money quickly. We booked cancellable hotel rooms, so no problem there.

Your other question, regarding Travel insurance is a bit less straight forward. It is very difficult to purchase Cancel For Any Reason insurance in the state of Washington, so you would be insuring against the usual covered cancellation reasons. Which would NOT have been covered in my recent situation. But you might take a look at the Allianz All Trips Premier Plan. We bought this Annual Policy last fall. It will supplement our $10K credit card trip cancellation coverage with an additional $10K, add an additional $50K to our Medicare $50K lifetime maximum coverage, PLUS it gives us $500K repatriation/Emergency Transportation coverage. But the part I like best is that because it is continuous coverage, it doesn't have a look back period for Pre-existing Conditions.

Prior to purchasing this policy, I tended to think I didn't need additional insurance. But after hearing about a family friend who was very badly hurt on a vacation (and this person was not doing anything risky), I realized that insurance is for these exact instances --- we can self insure hotel and airfare with refundable options. But catastrophic accidents are where we need a supplemental insurance policy.

I hope this helps.

Thank you for the responses, thus far. Hadn't thought about Med Evac and that is great 'heads up.' Thanks Patricia & SunnyBlue. Got me thinking of a friend who got to spend an extra 7 weeks in France a few years back ... mostly in hospital and then recuperating before being able to fly home.

So, need to further investigate:

• Medical Evacuation (Membership vs. Insurance?)
• Trip cancellation / Trip Interruption (if only for the three self-guided bike trips bit of our plan.) vs credit card cancellation benefits, if any on our cards. Thanks Johnt
• Take a closer look at what our Medicare Supplemental Insurance does and does not provide in terms of foreign country coverage and think more deeply about medical/health coverage

I will not worry about car rental (we will have a car for 3 days), since third party liability coverage is apparently covered on German rentals and, thanks to this forum's leads and my investigation last year, I learned that our VISA takes care of the CDW.

Won't worry about small stuff like baggage delay/loss (we pack light and carry on - won't trust our baggage to the airlines) or travel delay (when you get a lemon, make lemonade).

I am still deeply confused about insurance (and I am a retired lawyer who handled insurance coverage issues for much of my career). I have discovered other RS threads of interest, the most useful being:

• https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/evacuation-insurance-why-to-buy (Thanks to Horsewoofie)
• https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/a-reminder-about-having-proper-travel-insurance-especiallly-medical-evacuation (Thanks to UncleGus)
• https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/allianz-annual-travel-insurance-plan-emergency-medical-evac (Thanks to GLeeful)
• https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tourist-scams/recommend-good-medical-evacuation-program (Thanks to sgbarnes1 for sharing his/her sad tale)

... as well as some non-RS sites - including:

• https://www.usnews.com/insurance/travel/medical-travel-insurance
• https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/l/best-travel-insurance-companies/?utm_campaign=20780998235&accountid=6476356880&utm_content=175608498608&utm_term=kwd-382476504689&network=g&device=c&placement=&location_physical=9199035&device_model=&creative=720009408901&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAApmY5nwGO1aGPPokQL9BUazJ9Fcvy&gclid=CjwKCAiA5eC9BhAuEiwA3CKwQjbtIoAnz5OCh4HaMrhTGgGFJRmN_pCEwlPpStbbhZrxddIFKex_HBoCR9MQAvD_BwE

Getting older is a bear ... we didn't worry about this stuff so much in past years. What, me worry?

I look forward to further thoughts, experiences and recommendations.

We have a Medjet 5 year policy. There is an AARP discount. Medjet will evacuate you to the hospital of your choice, not just the nearest "acceptable" facility. You don't have to be overseas, it covers you anywhere over 150 miles from home.

MedJet Assist has membership plans ranging from 1 to 5 years. They also have shorter term opitons that one might want for just a particular trip. You should definitely talk to them and explore the options they offer.

And getting old is not a bear. Getting old is easy -- just live a long time. It's being old that's a real bear!

For flights, we are generally on Delta and are comfortable booking tickets that if we cancel, we have a flight credit, which we have done.

Regarding medical we get a GeoBlue policy that includes medical evacuation.

Sounds like your biggest issue is the tours, which I agree with you, coverage for those will likely be challenging.

When deciding on a Travel insurance purchase, I consider insurance amount and refundable reservations as hand in hand. Anything that is non refundable I insure, for me it was a cruise cost, one non refundable hotel and bus transportation. Did not insure airfare as a credit would be received. I did have to cancel a Europe trip and cruise two days before departure due to illness and promptly received reimbursement from Allianz ( have used Allianz for all trips) for all receipts submitted even that $83 bus trip.
Maybe what is confusing is insurance offered is set up as a package and may include the medical and out of pocket costs too as I purchased a policy that covered medical, medical evacuation, additional items and the total non refundable amount. It was easier that way for us as age seemed to be the biggest factor for determining the policy premium. I see your bike trip as comparable to the cruise cost and needing to be insured if non refundable.

With refundable plane tickets and refundable hotels, you are just insuring the bike tours. Then the question is, what are the odds that you will cancel the tours? Of course the cost of the insurance may be not much more if you insure everything and not buy the refundable plane tickets and the cancelable hotel rooms. A cheap use it or loose it plane ticket might be $750 less and a non refundable hotel room might be $50 a night less. Decisions, decisions....

just the bike tours

Well, last April in Puglia, on a rainy day, we sped around a corner at a busy intersection in Ostuni, in order to get some speed for the hill ahead. I was in the lead. My tires slid on a wet metal strip in the road. Down I went and my wife then sorta followed suit, a little less spectacularly.

Fortunately the cars all safely stopped and all we suffered was a small indignity, a scraped elbow and strained tendon in my A/C joint. Didn’t bother with medical treatment or even an evaluation.

But in hindsight, what if a car had hit my wife … or me? Food for thought, here … and shows the need for med evac.

So I do want to figure this out. FWIW will check more deeply into our supplemental health coverage with our insurance agent.

I was referring to cancelation insurance. Medical is a whole different world. With what you are doing, i would look at an Alianz policy and see if they have partner providers convenient to where you will be. The advantage is they are mostly minor emergency and outpatient clinics and take direct payment from Allianz. It's much easier than trying to get reimbursement. Then, I would have a good evacuation policy. All this is at a pretty reasonable cost.

TY TC, Sal, Bella and Mr. E

Everyone here and above has helped me a lot on this learning curve. And it’s nice to hear people’s thoughts on carriers they use … some of which are different ones than the highly rated ones in the US News and USA Today links that I listed above in my earlier TY/Reply.

Where I stand now

• Evac - Probably
• Health - maybe
• Cancellation/interruption - likely for those big ticket items that are non refundable LATE NOTE: * Per Late Addition above to my original post, seems like the expense to benefit ratio isn’t really worth it.*
• CDW - No.
• Other - No. LATE NOTE Only if included

Carrier(s) - still need to seriously investigate. LATE NOTE *Hope to hear more from this forum. *

Hello,

Price out the Allianz All Trips Premier annual policy. It should be about a third of what you got for the single trip quote. Ours was about $1100.

Evac – Probably
For me it made sense. If I have something major, like most Americans I am going to feel more comfortable in a US hospital for the procedure and for any long term hospitalization. For the cost, seemed to be worth it.

Health – maybe
That’s the most interesting one. If your US policy will reimburse then you just have to have a nest egg large enough for open heart surgery in Berlin. Of course most of the travel medical policies are also reimbursements for things like that. So same nest egg. If your US policy will not cover you, then $50,000 might be good coverage to take care of you until you can be shipped home with the evac policy.

Cancellation/interruption - likely for those big ticket items that are non refundable LATE NOTE: * Per Late Addition above to my original post, seems like the expense to benefit ratio isn’t really worth it.* The math never worked for me, but I traveled a lot so I began to see the benefit of averages. If tis a one off trip, maybe you do buy some.