Medical Travel Insurance Buying Guide
You can buy a budget holiday; you can buy your holiday clothes from Primark, but if there's one thing you shouldn’t do, it’s buy budget travel insurance. It is important that you buy travel insurance with the correct level of cover. Without it, you can amount debts that are, seemingly, unsurmountable. Don’t worry, it’s quite easy to make the right decisions when buying travel insurance, you just need to know what to look for.
- Medical travel insurance: if you have a pre-existing medical condition, it’s always better to declare it and pay a bit extra for medical travel insurance, than to leave it undeclared and unable to make a claim. People assume that medical travel insurance covers you only for that condition, but actually, it’s more complex. If you fall ill or have an accident, and there’s even the slightest possibility that your condition caused the event – whether you think it did or didn’t – they will not pay out if you did not pay for additional cover. Declare medical conditions to your insurers!
- Don’t double insurer yourself: sometimes, you might have insurance cover without realising it. For example, some credit cards come with travel insurance, so too do certain home insurance policies. We’re not sure on the rules, but it’s unlikely that you’re able to claim twice. In fact, there may be laws that prevent you from buying more than one insurance policy at a time, although it’s unlikely because it can happen by accident. Make sure you check your existing policies for both credit cards and insurance, because you may find you're already insured. It’s just an added expense that you don’t need to make.
- The best insurance policies are made to measure: many insurance policies are ‘one-size fits all’. These tend to be the policies that you find on comparison websites. It’s much better to speak to your insurer so that you can tailor the policy to your exact requirements. This means that you receive the correct level of cover, and that the correct eventualities are insured against.
For instance, a ‘one-size fits all’ might insure you against shark bites, but if you're travelling to the Alps, that’s unlikely to happen. What could happen is an avalanche, but the generic insurance policy may not cover you for this. It is much better to speak with an insurance specialist to get the right cover. This becomes increasingly important if you're travelling to countries with a complex climate or history, or you’re going to undertake activities that are relatively rare.
Don’t buy the policy from your tour operator: there’s no other reason for saying this than the cost. These policies will cost far more than policies that you buy from a third-party insurer. Furthermore, the tour operators sell the ‘one-size fits all’ model insurance policies, so you’re unlikely to receive adequate cover. So, for less money, you can buy a better policy elsewhere. Remember that these tour operators earn commission on every policy they sell, so they’ll always be a premium added to their policies.
