Travel Insurance Help

[archdandy]

I'm looking for travel insurance for our upcoming trip in October. I've always just gone with the traditional Disney insurance before but decided against it this time around. So I have never shopped for a third party insurance and I guess I need some help with it. My DH has work benefits but I assume those would be no good if we got injured in the states, correct? I used squaremouth.com to compare prices and I found one that seems reasonable. Its $89.00 and trip cancellation coverage is full cost ($2900), interruption is $4350, medical evacuation is $150,000 and medical secondary is $10,000. Can anybody tell me if this is good or an adequate amount of insurance, especially for the medical? If something did happen to either DH or I would $10,000 be enough to cover it? I'm just a worrier by nature. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[TaniaU]

Our work insurance covered a trip to the Denver children's hospital (ambulance, stitches and mri). But they had to bill me because it had to go through Alberta health care first, which paid something silly like $20, my insurance covered the rest.

I don't know if actual trip insurance would have made the process eaiser.

I think the total cost was $5000, but I'm not 100% sure.

 

[Gigi22]

Have your DH call HR/Pay and Benefits and check whether out of province and out of country benefits are offered as part of his insurance through work. If it is offered, get him to find out what the cap is on his coverage. DH and I had insurance through work that did cover out of province travel, but there was a relatively low cap set--so we always bought added travel insurance.

$10K doesn't cover very much in the U.S. (remember you have to pay in U.S. $$, so if the Canadian dollar tanks, you still owe in U.S. dollars), I would top it up, or get better coverage.

 

[3pletprincesses]

We hahve it with Dh work up to 500 000 per person which is not much when oyu think how much a surgery could be. that being said, check with your bank. Last year with TD canada trust my mom paid under $100 for almost a month of coverage for her family insurance.

 

[Sue M]

We take out Blue Cross annual policy- 15 day trips cost us $50 for year. We added an extension to cover us for 21 days for Aug vacay, for $10.

We get $5,000,000 coverage. also covers flying you home, and flying a family member out to you. Dental, and follow up in Canada following repatriation. And travel assistance.


We have Blue Cross thru work, so we get a discount for the travel insur. 10% i think.

Our work policy will cover out of Prov. but if there was something major, it would affect our lifelong limit on policy (or wipe it out). So I prefer to get a separate travel policy, it's cheap enough.
I have trip interruption on my Visa, and travel med, but for some reason, I don't trust it. Everyone knows Blue Cross, I feel better having that, and it's cheap.

 

[Gigi22]

OP, there was just a feature on Global News concerning travel insurance. They recommended that people not purchase insurance from their TA, and suggested using a website called InsureMyTrip.com (not sure of URL).

I do not feel comfortable with out of country travel insurance for anything less than $2,000,000 each. DH and I are lucky, we get inexpensive annual travel insurance to top up our existing health insurance policy from our employer--the top up costs us about $11.00 a month for the two of us. There are insurance deals out there!

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

I would worry about the $10,000 medical. That seems low.

We are currently shopping for a policy for our December trip. I have found a plan through Desjardins Financial that has $5,000,000 (per traveller) in medical coverage, along with trip cancellation, interruption, etc. Cost for the three of us is $202, taxes included. It may seem high in comparison to the other low-cost plans, but it sure is good piece of mind to know that our medical expenses will be well covered in the event one of us is seriously injured. Worth every penny of the $202, IMHO!

 

[atraveler86]

"ArchDandy" I would highly recommend that you make sure you have insurance for you and your kids before heading to this trip. One way to go about this, is to purchase a 3rd party insurance service (like blue cross for example), but to be honest why do that when you might already have insurance!!

A lot of credit cards have travel insurance benefits, and they are usually really god and offer full protection. But the trick is to know what really you cc offers u and what the insurance they say they have includes. Best way to do that, is by using some sort of online tool to compare credit cards against yours, or just to know more about your credit card... One that I have started using recently is one made by a company called InsurEye. ( https:// insureye.com/insurance_toolkit/credit_card_comparison )

Give it a try, hopefully your already have insurance and will save a couple of bucks!

Cheers

 

[Daisy-J&D]

We just researched this A LOT and were really happy with TRAVEL UNDERWRITERS. I also did a bit of research on them and they are the company that ATB Financial sells insurance through (although I was not buing through ATB). Also, I think British Airways uses them.

My lesson learned is that travel insurance is tricky and you want to make sure you don't get into it blindly. We liked Travel Underwriters because their pre-existing coverage look back period was 7 days...so as long as you are FINE within the 7 days before travel and a doctor has not advised against travel then any pre-existing (acute emergency) is covered. This is important and I think a lot of people overlook it. For example, RBC, manulife etc have 90 day look back periods so if a symptom, new medication, increase in medication etc happened in those 90 days before travel then you would NOT be covered for that medical issue if it was the diagnosis of the emergency.

Hope this helps!

 

[Daisy-J&D]

Its $89.00 and trip cancellation coverage is full cost ($2900), interruption is $4350, medical evacuation is $150,000 and medical secondary is $10,000. Can anybody tell me if this is good or an adequate amount of insurance, especially for the medical? If something did happen to either DH or I would $10,000 be enough to cover it? I'm just a worrier by nature. Any help would be appreciated.

This is BAD coverage. The cost PER DAY can be 10k-20k. My friend's grandfather had a stroke while in Florida and it cost them over 100k. Walk into an emergency room alone and it could be 5k.

Also medical evacuation is usually JUST transportation and not any medical service associated (that comes from your emergency medical funds) so don't think "they'll just fly me back to Canada".

 

[Alderbrook]

We buy thru CAA (Manulife) & it's $5 MIL coverage. It cost us $55 for our family of 3 the last time. We buy the insurance thru disney just for the cancellation portion which was $75 per adult.