Health
The ins and outs of emergency medical evacuation coverage
Basics of evacuation coverage
Emergency medical evacuation service is very rarely needed but can be extremely expensive. It is one of the travel emergencies usually not provided for in your “at home” health insurance coverage.
For purposes of this article, the term “emergency medical evacuation” will also include “repatriation.”
Insurers define emergency medical evacuation as transportation to where the nearest appropriate medical treatment can be provided, by the most direct and economical route possible.
Look for the preexisting-condition clause when buying travel insurance
Editor’s note: Having written several articles on travel insurance for ITN (April ’94, pg. 34; July ’94, pg. 51; Aug. ’94, pg. 37, & Oct. ’94, pg. 30), Mr. Wirtanen expressed interest in commenting on the issue dealt with in the letter by ITN reader Mr. Brewer, appearing on the preceding page.
Overseas Health Assistance
Reader-recommended
A travel-insurance company recommended by Robert and Miriam Bacon of Lake Worth, FL, is Amex Assurance Co. (800/541-3522 in San Diego, CA).
They wrote of the company, “Their insurance is low cost; for example, $87 family coverage for one to eight days or $127 for up to 31 days.
“After our trip to Australia and New Zealand and after another trip to Morocco, our modest claims were processed quickly and to our complete satisfaction.”
Benefits curtailed
The Gold MasterCard overseas MasterAssist Medical Protection program has canceled the outstanding benefits for overseas travelers as described in the article “Selecting Travel Health Insurance” (ITN, May ‘91, pg. 64).
This cancellation is effective Jan. 1, 1992. Benefits now are essentially ones providing “referrals” and other “assistance.”
The provisions in effect through 1991 supplied no-extra-cost health insurance, medically required transportation to cardholders’ home cities and several other benefits not available through other credit cards.
Selecting travel health insurance — sorting out your options
There’s a basic philosophy that will keep one from being “insurance poor,” and that is this: insure youself only against losses that you can’t afford.
Approaching health insurance
Most regular health insurance policies extend their coverage to costs incurred anywhere. They may require you to pay for medical expenses upfront, but they’ll reimburse based on their normal coverage.
Trip cancellation policies, with a cost of 5'/2% to 8% of the trip cost, may pay as little as a fraction of your pretrip deposit... if you can get past the fine-print conditions.