Travel insurance tends to be a grudge-buy, (because why pay money when you haven’t been in hospital because of an accident for years/ever, so what are the chances of it happening whilst you’re abroad, right?) but as our medical condition travel insurance customers can testify, it’s only when you need to claim on a travel insurance policy that you realise its worth, especially if you have an emergency situation. Furthermore you shouldn’t try to save money by not declaring your medical conditions.
Should you have an accident whilst away or abroad, the repercussions of you not having travel insurance could be serious. The medical costs are usually the thing that surprises travellers who end up injured or ill whilst on holiday. We tend to take our free NHS healthcare for granted, so when presented with a bill of £97 just for an x-ray, amongst the other medical costs you might incur, people are shocked – and worried, if they don’t have adequate travel insurance.
If you have a medical condition you must declare all your medication and health history to your travel insurance provider and arrange the appropriate travel insurance with pre existing medical conditions cover, failure do this you could invalidate your policy.
We know when you’re planning your dream holiday the last thing you want to think about is something going wrong. However accidents do happen and if you are abroad without travel insurance or the appropriate type of policy such as medical conditions travel insurance, the cost of medical or emergency treatment could bankrupt you, particularly if you need to be repatriated.
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) have given the following examples on their web site:
The reality is, the cost of a travel insurance policy is very low compared to the cover it provides, so as much as you think “it won’t happen to me” better to be safe than sorry and make sure you have travel insurance whenever you go abroad.
