Travelling to the US without medical insurance...

[Deleted member 26715]

Similar story my daughter 16 at the time was sat around the pool at the villa, my brother in law who was with us grabbed her by the arm to pull her into the pool. Unfortunately the pull dislocated her shoulder, we took her to the local hospital, with the cost of room, the porter, the wheelchair to take her to x-ray, the x-rays, the doctors, the nurse etc. etc. etc. bill came to $2400 & that was 2001. US is a place I won't go to without insurance.

 

[screenman]

[QUOTE 4741620, member: 9609"]do you not find only paying out 87% of the time a low figure?, that must be a lot of people having their claims rejected, tbh I didn't expect it to be anywhere near as poor as that.
the motor claims rejected is better than I would have imagined, but home and holiday seem very worrying![/QUOTE]

You are a very trusting guy. Do you know how many expensive camera's or pieces of gold go missing.

 

[NorthernDave]

[QUOTE 4741620, member: 9609"]do you not find only paying out 87% of the time a low figure?, that must be a lot of people having their claims rejected, tbh I didn't expect it to be anywhere near as poor as that.
the motor claims rejected is better than I would have imagined, but home and holiday seem very worrying![/QUOTE]

Not if you look at the reasons for not settling.
One of the reasons cited for declining a claim is that the cost of the claim is below the excess - effectively take out a policy with a £250 excess, put in a claim for £200 and unsurprisingly it won't get paid, but it gets recorded as a declined claim.
Another reason given is non-disclosure of a pre-existing medical condition - again not surprising they don't get paid either.

 

[srw]

Check your bank account, mine provides free international travel insurance along with a bunch of other freebies that are really useful.

Except that these things aren't actually free. You're probably paying a tenner or so a month, or else are so in debt or so rich that the bank makes enough money out of you that way that it can afford to subsidise your insurance.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

Get insurance but read the wording carefully: my friend's son went on a world trip, once out of Europe he bought insurance, they took his payment, then when something happened they refused to pay stating he was not covered because he took insurance when already abroad.

 

[srw]

I'd be interested to find out more about what the "high jinks" actually were...

My understanding (and @srw can probably help out here) is that British insurers tend to be rather good overall and don't usually exclude things willy-nilly without good reason.

This. They may erect loads of hoops for you to jump through, but as long as you follow the letter of policy they'll cover you. My best guess from the (very limited) story is that @Bromptonaut's friend was engaging in an activity which was specifically excluded, or hadn't declared a pre-existing condition, or hadn't got pre-approval for some expenditure.

 

[gavroche]

No wish to go to the States, ever.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

No wish to go to the States, ever.

[QUOTE 4741735, member: 259"]Well that's a relief then.[/QUOTE]

We all know one country we can travel to then...

I will never go there either, so even better news for you. Nor England. Both countries are full of bell-ends.

 

[Jimidh]

I will never go there either, so even better news for you. Nor England. Both countries are full of bell-ends.

Every country has its share of Bellends - Scotland included.

As for the original question I wouldn't head to the states without insurance as even basic healthcare costs can be crippling.

I'm off to New York on Friday - it's an awesome place to visit and very culturally diverse. America isn't just Bellend Trump supporters.

 

[jonny jeez]

Except that these things aren't actually free. You're probably paying a tenner or so a month, or else are so in debt or so rich that the bank makes enough money out of you that way that it can afford to subsidise your insurance.

Depends how you look at it.

Sure, I pay for the account but aside from the banking privileges (which I don't actually use much), I get a bunch of stuff with that, which saves me way more. My international family travel insurance and family breakdown recovery (for every car and motorcycle In the household), mobile phone insurance (for every handset in the family) being the best examples. However I also gain a lot of benefit from the airport club lounge access (I travel a lot for work).

If I didn't have a family, drive, own phones or travel then yes, it wouldn't be free at all.

 

[slowmotion]

I dimly remember reading that a third of all personal bankruptcies in the US were due to medical bills.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Coming soon, to a NHS near you...

 

[slowmotion]

Every country has its share of Bellends - Scotland included.

As for the original question I wouldn't head to the states without insurance as even basic healthcare costs can be crippling.

I'm off to New York on Friday - it's an awesome place to visit and very culturally diverse. America isn't just Bellend Trump supporters.

You have to realise that @Marmion has a tendency to see things in blue and white.

 

[mjr]

Travel insurance is so cheap you'd be insane not to.

I'm picking on one example, but all of you saying that travel insurance is cheap have probably never tried to get medical insurance for someone with a chronic-but-harmless illness - that is, one which I'm told if treated has no effect on life expectency because the treatment basically reduces the risk of being killed by the illness sufficiently that the beneficial side-effects of the treatment outweigh the residual risk. In other words: the main difference between them and a member of the general population is simply the diagnosis... and a fraction of the general population will have the same illness, undiagnosed, with the elevated risk... plus the diagnosed people are routinely checked for a range of other conditions like diabetes, so insurers will usually know if they've got that.

But simply by being diagnosed and treated, the insurance gets loaded - I'm paying about 5 times as much as if I didn't have a chronic illness. Unless the medics are blowing smoke up my arse about the benefits of treatment, I think this is a market effect rather than actuarial adjustment. I have to buy from a smaller market of insurers who seem fairly close on price and even those won't give a representative price until you go through screening - despite a range of starting prices, the wildly different loadings seem to put most within £30 of each other, usually within £5. Some of the large providers are known for flat-out declining certain conditions so you can't ask them else you have to answer the "have you ever been refused insurance?" type question with "Yes" and that shrinks your potential market even further. It seems like a market for lemons.

And that small market is before you start excluding insurers with onerous restrictions on physical activities like cycling.

All this takes farking hours and often phone calls, too. And that's if you know it's coming and keep your own medical notes (I do... I've been ill a long time). Some of the medical specialist insurers even ask if you've had a common cold in the last year!

I still wouldn't travel without insurance but I can understand why people take the risk.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

That's simply not true.
No one will let you die. They will treat you, at a public/welfare hospital rather then a private one but will still bill you.

They. so I'm told from the American Doctors we have, that they have 'Social Workers'
Contrary to this country though, theirs are looking at ways you can pay for treatment (even If it's a second mortgage)