Travel insurance types

I have purchased traditional travel insurance which includes trip cancellation/delays along with medical. I travel with my husband who has pre-existing medical conditions and many plans will not cover them unless the travel insurance is purchased within a set number of days of the first travel booking. There are medical only plans which I have not purchased and but you can research to see if they are a better fit and whether they also have requirements to cover pre-existing conditions.

My question is -- I will be paying for flights, our Norway in a Nutshell tour tickets, and 2 overnight ferry trips in advance. Otherwise we will pay for most lodging and activities once we are there. Should I still follow the guideline above and buy trip interruption or cancellation coverage within a week of buying my airline tickets (the first thing I will pay for, this week)? We are novice European travels but with our 79 yr old mom coming, we want to have some basic trip protection in case of unexpected illness.

Hi Kathy, a lot depends on what you want covered. For example, if your flights are refundable, there's no need to cover them in a travel insurance policy since you'll get your money back. And in fact even if you wanted to cover them, they wouldn't be covered because anything that's refundable is generally not going to be covered. Or even if you get a credit for that flight, rather than being fully refundable. For example when I fly, I usually fly Delta and I do not buy tickets that are fully refundable. But I would get a credit to use for future airfare, which is fine with me since I fly on Delta a lot.

I also self-insure other items like hotels and rental cars by using my Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which has built-in travel insurance. In that case if anything goes wrong under the policy, I would be reimbursed by Chase. So I don't need a separate policy for that either. And I also usually book fully refundable hotel rooms. It's not that much more expensive and I found that it gives me peace of mind, plus I don't have to worry about covering it under a policy.

Really in my case, the only thing that I would cover with a policy would be a tour. And usually when you are covering something like that, you have to purchase the policy within a certain amount of days after paying your first deposit. So it definitely pays to see how much time you have to get that paid. On my last trip I paid for a tour and had to purchase the policy within 30 days after the deposit.

And as Sandy noted above ,medical expenses are a whole different ball game. In that case, I usually am covered by a different policy that gives me medical evacuation if it is needed. Any emergency medical expenses would be covered by my Medicare plan so I don't worry about that, but evacuation I do, so I have an annual policy that includes that.

Thank you! I will look into getting a Chase Sapphire card, I already bank with them and did not know about the travel insurance option! Yes I know medical is a different situation than the trip interruption protection, I will still get an emergency medical plan as we do not think Mom's Medicare Advantage plan covers her out of country, but need to call them. Thanks again!

Not an expert, but the insurance company has to know how much to cover. So usually, Ive seen where they give you an initial premium based on what you have already purchased, and if you add more items (i.e., more exposure to them), you have to tell them and they increase the cost of the coverage. Its not just blanket overage for your whole trip.

So, what exactly is your concern? What is the risk you fear? What insurance is already available to you? What is the expense of the coverage? And what is the benefit that you get? Finally, are there alternatives to buying insurance. Refundable flights that you can cancel or booking hotels now that you can cancel on short notice?

I suspect your concerns are likely related to your mother’s age, health and what might go wrong.

Let’s start with your mother’s coverage. Medicare won’t cover foreign medical. Does she have a supplemental insurance plan over and above Medicare. Many seniors do. That will likely have a provision for $50k for overseas medical coverage for trips of no more than 60 days. The $50k is likely a lifetime cap; has she ever used any?. If she has a supplemental plan, look at that policy or contact her insurance agent or the carrier.

Is her current health good? Are you concerned about having to cancel before you even fly away? To the extent you book hotels now, you don’t necessarily pay now and you can cancel until you are very close to the actual reserved dates of stay.

Are getting the cheapest airline tix or are you willing to pay extra for airfare tix you can cancel? Refundable tix?

How expensive is the trip cancellation coverage? When I looked at this a year ago it ran over $3,000 for my wife and me. We’re in our early 70s, in good health, and I did not like the cost benefit ratio of cancellation coverage.

For us, my fear was related to our trip plan. 30 days. 13 days of which involved cycling. What if we had a bike accident? Our supplemental heath insurance coverage was likely good enough.

But what if we needed a medical evacuation flight. Med evac flights can run high five figures and even over six figures. The cost of that coverage was just a little over $200. The cost benefit ratio of that coverage made a lot of sense. Special added bonus. The med evac insurance included another $50k coverage for medical care on our trip.

I began my insurance journey on this forum, just as you are. I began with the idea that you have … get cancellation coverage, but ended up with a very different decision to get med evac coverage. My journey, my research, the responses of others on this forum and some additional links can all be found here

Trip Cancellation at no cost insurance is very expensive. We almost never buy that insurance.
When we book air travel, I usually book the insurance offered by the airline, it is not real expensive, but it is not cancel at no cost.
I do purchase medical coverage and evacuation insurance for wife and self from AmEx when we travel. I can usually buy this coverage for both of us for about $40. Our Blue Cross/Shield covers us overseas, but most of the time overseas you must pay in advance to get care. Also, evacuation can be very expensive.

I’d definitely buy the trip insurance soon after booking your first major payment, like the flights. It gave us peace of mind.