The good old insurance question

It really is not a question of getting insurance or not, but a matter of assessing the risks of what types of insurance make sense.

For me, I do not buy travel insurance. I book everything myself, do not take expensive tours, when I buy an air ticket, if I have to cancel, I get the cost as a credit, but with traveling often, not a problem, plus I probably have some premium credit card coverage that I have never used. Basically, if thing go bad, I am not out much, probably less than a premium. Add to that, many insurance programs want to know the total cost of the trip, but that is not my total exposure.

Health coverage though is different, I still have never purchased additional travel health insurance, but am approaching the point I will. So far, have not had serious issues, have good health insurance that covers me, not too worried about evacuation. But if you are only in need of health coverage, buying general "trip insurance" that includes health, is not a great option.

But, I will be crossing that Medicare threshold in a bit over a year, so we will likely look at a good medical policy, maybe a yearly thing, maybe by trip, but yeah, it becomes more of a concern.

We always had medical evac and out of area coverage medical insurance at 80%, with a cap, included as a benefit with our medical insurance. I will soon be on Medicare, and I just read my policy, and I will still have out of area medical coverage. I'm not clear on the evac but I will get that clarified. I find travel insurance quite annoying because they bundle so much together. I do not need or want medical coverage. I do not want to include the airfare portion because I can change my flights. My credit card does cover cancellation under certain circumstances. The whole insurance question comes down to cost vs. the probability of any individual circumstance occurring relative to how risk adverse an individual is.

I also have AAA, but I have to wonder if the requirement to sign a waiver is part of a "scare tactic" to encourage folks to buy their insurance. We purchased a cruise through AAA, I did purchase my own cancellation coverage thru Insuremytrip. For the most part, I was able to get coverage for just the items I wanted coverage. This was before I acquired a credit card with cancellation coverage.

What I do think a person should do, is double check what coverages they actually have by looking at their own health care policy and any other coverage thru credit cards. And then decide on what level of risk they are willing to take on.