Decent travel insurance?

[deek]

I usually buy my flight tickets through expedia, which has travel insurance options (including medical). This time I got a great deal directly through airline site booking, but am nervous about not having the insurance.

Does anyone know of reasonable plans?

Thanks in advance.

[iamjoy]

1. Check With Your Credit Card Company

sometimes it is automatic if you put it on that card (but is unlikely to include medical)

[gristy]

2. Do you not have medical and life insurance?

If you have medical and life insurance then you don't need travel insurance. Trying to guess how you are going to die or be hurt, and insuring against only that is an ill-advised gamble, IMO.

[amazona]

4. your medical insurance doesn't cover travel/med evac

In some areas you really do need medical evacuation insurance in case of emergency. For instance, in Kenya, the roads are so poor an ambulance might not be able to get to you for many hours in an accident -- you need to be evacuated to Nairobi by air. The name of the med evac insurance we had has slipped my mind but it was very, very cheap, in fact, the tour director paid for it himself but I think it was around $25 for two weeks (and most of us were over 60).

If you read your Blue Cross or whatever manual, you might be shocked to discovered that you weren't covered on your various trips outside the country and even outside your "network," your coverage can be significantly reduced. Everyone's policy is different.

[deek]

5. Medical insurance doesn't cover outside my state

I'm on Blue Cross, California Care. It doesn't cover anything outside my state, I think.

My daughter's on MediCal, which I don't believe transfers out of the state when you travel either.

I'm more concerned for her coverage than mine, since she does have medical conditions and is ill quite often.

[amazona]

3. what kind do you need ?

I usually don't bother with it because I travel a lot and the cost of trip cancellation type travel insurance is lost after you take 12 trips or so. I've had to cancel way less than 1 out of every 12 trips so I'm way ahead.

Just med evac/medical insurance by itself is pretty cheap. Try the lonelyplanet web site.

[deek]

6. I think

medical and cancellation, since we are traveling in a group of three and my daughter's health state is never predictable.

[AngryAmish]

7. test

Ignore me.

[sweettater]

8. Travel Guard

I recently traveled to Korea. I was unable to get to the airport (Inchon) because of fog in (Kwangju). I booked with another airline, $1358 and it was paid in full. I paid $71 for the policy. The Travel Guard people are very professional and the claim procedure was not at all complicated. Best $71 I ever spent. The best part was I got to spent an extra 2 days with my son and his family. My ticket claim money came 1 week from the day I mailed it! And, the ticket from Kwangju to Inchon was not on the original itinerary.