What travel insurance really means
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>I intend to stay in Asia for some time yet. I did consider travelling home to have surgery in the UK, but the medical Service here is excellent and I'm already scheduled in for the procedure on Monday. I was concerned about the long haul flight and travel time with a broken hand and fractured rib, as well as potential waiting times on the NHS.
So he's pretty clearly trying to game the situation. He wanted to keep traveling and avoid the NHS. The letter from the doctor saying he was not fit to fly simply states:
>The patient Badger Ryan Sean was admitted from 11/6 to 12/6 for an operation for a right index finger proximal phalanx avulsion fracture on 31/5 and was not fit for flying before his operation for his fracture.
It's reasonable for the insurance company to ask for more details and a specific reason why he wasn't fit to fly.
That emergency procedure, not the follow-up, seems more in line with what the plan is designed to cover.
That's bizarre to me as well. Why does he think not claiming reimbursement for covered expenses is being reasonable?
Part of me wonders whether this set fraud alarm bells ringing and made them scrutinise his case more. (Not that that excuses anything the company did subsequently).
What you did after the accident was reasonable. Claim the bills that you were covered for.
> And yes, because it turned out to be a fairly manageable bill. But the 2nd procedure was going to be considerably more, so I notified them. To clarify, I didn't want any long term care at all, I was only asking them to cover the 2nd operation that I was already scheduled in for.
Which they specifically told you you weren't covered for.
Your article says
>At this point, it’s 4 days until my scheduled surgery to have a plate fitted in my hand, and each reply from Insure and Go takes 3–4 days
The e-mails you include from Insure and Go have time stamps of June 6 and June 7. Perhaps they took more time before or after that, but during the time sensitive part of your narrative they were responsive. It was you that didn't respond to their June 7 e-mail requesting the not fit to fly until at least June 12.
>The patient may want to forward onto the treating doctor to help point out to us where in the manual the reason why he is not fit to fly as our decision would still be curtailment and he would have been fit to fly. http://www.iata.org/publications/Pages/medical-manual.aspx
(1) Claim your expenses that are clearly covered by your policy. The care in Bali, taxi ride in Bali, Flight to Singapore, Taxi in Singapore, Hospital stay, and the hotel in Singapore. That's gotta be at least $6,000 that you're just leaving on the table.
(2) Call your Doctor and ask him to write a better letter in support of your claim. It should be something like this:
To Whom it may concern,
I have reviewed the IATA manual and my patient Mr. Badger was unfit to fly pending his surgery. The manual states:
The following tables are provided as a guide to the timeframe that should elapse between a medical event and the intended flight. The timeframes may be changed following considered medical assessment of a specific case.
After my medical assessment I found Mr. Badger unfit to fly because:
(1) [Bad thing that might happen] because [medical reason bad thing might happen] (2) [Bad thing that might happen] because [medical reason bad thing might happen] (3) [Bad thing that might happen] because [medical reason bad thing might happen]
Thank You,
Dr So and So
If after they "review" my case they ask again, I will reach out to the DR who treated me and waste more of his time, but I'm confident the insurance company would have still found a way to weasel out of it, even if the DR had been more explicit. I imagine it wasn't his first time writing a "not fit to fly" note, after all...
My trick is simple: Get an Amex Platinum if you need insurance for under 2 weeks [1] and buy insurance from your bank for anything longer. Banks compete on trust, so they don't randomly fuck you over. I actually used my bank's health insurance when I needed it and they were nothing but professional. It was RBC Canada, if it matters.
[1] Reach out to me if you do this and we'll both get enough points for a free transatlantic flight.
Flying you home and palming you off onto the state seems kinda shady to me. That’s not really “medical cover”, it’s just a flight home. And to make matters worse they made out as if flying him home was doing him a favour.
EDIT: Reading some of the other comments makes me think I’m just another mug who doesn’t read his insurance policies. But I still think that offering “£5,000,000 in medical cover” without qualifying that it really means "£5,000,000 in medical cover, only if we absolutely can't get you home and get the NHS to do it for free", borders on deliberately misleading.
I've certainly never thought that was the case, and I don't think my comment implied that (I've edited it for clarity anyway).
What I meant was, I've always assumed that if I had an accident abroad, it would cover me for any surgery I needed in the immediate aftermath, until I was well enough to either resume my trip, or fly home somewhat comfortably.
I still don't think that's an unreasonable assumption, but I've learned something today!
Depends on the policy but I doubt there is a "somewhat comfortably" clause - if you want your insurance policy to cover you you generally have to follow what their policy requires and with cheapo insurance like this, if you are clear to fly, you are expected to fly home.
It's gonna be very difficult to get onto a plane and then claim you were unable to fly even if Singapore is a world closer to Indonesia than the UK.
I feel for this guy though, the situation sucks.
Yep, and this post has been an education for me!
However, I still have issues with the way it's marketed. I think part of the problem is showing these huge numbers for medical cover. It's almost a psychological trick, in the same way that lottery players see an enormous jackpot and somehow conflate it with the likelihood of winning. It's falsely reassuring.
In reality, most claimants are going to spend much less than 1% of that £5 million limit before they get flown home. It only really applies to people who are at death's door and end up with a long stay in intensive care, or need a fully-staffed medical flight to get them home.
Exactly, but you're saying it like it's a bad thing instead of "this is just what travel insurance is and why it's so cheap."
I still think it’s marketed in a deliberately misleading way.
With travel insurance generally, I think there's a distinction between emergency medical care you need RIGHT NOW and medical care that you need at some point.
If I get hit by a train and need to be pieced back together, am in the ICU, etc. I'd expect travel insurance to pay for that, up to the total coverage. If I get diagnosed with a slow moving cancer that needs treatment (but not today), I wouldn't expect travel insurance to cover it. I'd expect this to be laid out in the longer agreements I'm sure he had to sign to get this insurance. That's the difference between travel insurance and health insurance. I (Canadian) can get travel insurance for a trip to the US for damn cheap; that doesn't mean I can go live in the US and use that insurance for my day-to-day stuff.
Whether this particular incident is closer to the train or the cancer might be an open question. I think the key point, and maybe where he loses the argument, is that he already flew to Singapore. He took a ~3 hour flight in a worse state then when the insurance company advised him to fly home. Don't think he's going to win this one.
Also a ~14hr flight is a completely different proposition. Totally healthy people feel like shit after a flight that long. I really wouldn't want to take one if I was already in significant pain.
I agree with your sentiment and believe this is just a shitty fly-by-night fake "insurance" company that collects premiums and dispenses plane tickets, but insurers aren't obligated to pay top dollar for whatever course of treatment you deem necessary without any opportunity for negotiation. If they're footing your bill, they get to have a say in the matter of when and how the job gets done.
He paid pennies for the "coverage." With that being the case and his being a British citizen, their treatment plan for everything is likely to fly patients back to the UK whenever possible. You don't become a billion-pound company charging 200 pounds at a time while also reimbursing first-world medical claims for travelers who aren't paralyzed in an ICU. I doubt they offer similar coverage to non-Brits for the same price, if at all.
We have similar plans wrt auto insurance in the US. You can either get proper insurance and pay a fair amount or the legal bare minimum for pennies, and when you get in your first at-fault accident you quickly learn what it is you have (or haven't) been paying for.
They inquired if he had a pre booked flight home:
>> Our medical team believe this injury may require long term care, so we would see if beneficial that you return to the UK for treatment, if you have a pre booked flight home please advise us on the date?
His response to that line was:
>> The medical team here have suggested that I will require physiotherapy once a week for 4 to 6 weeks. I have no return flight booked at present, as I intend to stay in Asia for some time yet. I did consider travelling home to have surgery in the UK, but the medical Service is excellent and I'm already scheduled in for the procedure on Monday.
The partial quote you took, "I intend to stay in Asia for some time yet", was his justification for not having a pre booked flight home, not an expression of his refusal to comply with their recommendations.
> He wanted to keep traveling and avoid the NHS.
You've also mistaken his desire to finish receiving treatment in Singapore as a desire to avoid the NHS. His desire was to receive the most immediate care possible and the surgery was intended to install a plate to stabilize his hand and ensure that it heals properly.
They were asking him to fly for 20+ hours in a coach seat, considering his hand was unstable that seams unreasonable. It also increases the likelihood of additional injury as he travels.
The were asking him to transition his medical care from one hospital to another in another country on the other side of the globe. That by itself would introduce considerable delay in treatment as the new medical team would need to fully access his treatment up to that point and establish a new treatment plan. The surgery he was prescribed was to stabilize his injury to ensure it healed properly, delaying that treatment could potentially lead to improper healing.
As someone who popped a pulled tendon and had to wait 6 months (MURICA!) for an appointment with an orthopedist at which point my injury was healed (thankfully correctly), I can fully understand his desire to stay put and finish his treatment.
It's right there in his e-mail. He was concerned:
"About potential waiting times on the NHS".
>They were asking him to fly for 20+ hours in a coach seat, considering his hand was unstable that seams unreasonable. It also increases the likelihood of additional injury as he travels.
IMHO if his hand is well enough to be discharged then the presumption is it's well enough to travel. Of course, he can provide evidence from his doctor to rebut that presumption. The insurance co asked for that but it's not clear he ever provided it.
>The were asking him to transition his medical care from one hospital to another in another country on the other side of the globe.
Which is the service he paid for. Travel insurance is to pay for emergency care until you are able to fly home. If he wants an "any hospital, for any treatment, in any country" policy those are sold too, but, naturally, are much more expensive than Bronze level travelers insurance.
That has a cost. I'm Canadian and if I wanted to get a scan, it could takes months. If it's actually an emergency, it will be much faster, if I paid for it at a private clinic, it would be much faster too. Non urgent immediate care has a price.
> The surgery he was prescribed was to stabilize his injury to ensure it healed properly, delaying that treatment could potentially lead to improper healing.
They aren't there to give him "proper healing", they are there to support emergency situation.
If you go to your hospital and it takes 6 months, it's because they believe that 6 months is still "proper healing". If it takes him longer in UK, it means that it's still "proper healing".
His first hospital stay was an emergency, he didn't want to make the claims, but that was what was claimable.
If his doctor in Singapore though that he couldn't take the plane, then that's what he should have gotten as proof.
At least in the United States there's a distinction between Emergency, Urgent and Route care. I would classify this as urgent.
> They aren't there to give him "proper healing", they are there to support emergency situation.
Again, I'm not sure how it is in Canada but in the United States once you've undergone Emergency Surgery and you are stabilized; they move you into the non-emergency care ward and any followup procedures or treatment are on a needs basis.
My assumption was that after his emergency surgery he was transitioned to a non-emergency care team that was responsible for for the follow up surgery.
If he were undergoing emergency surgery to install the plate, I'm not sure they'd make him wait.
Private health insurance is by definition avoiding the NHS, which was 10,000 miles away anyway, so I’m not sure what point you’re making here? If the terms of the policy were we’ll fly you home in cattle class and dump you on the taxpayer then that should be made clear
It seems to me that the whole thing is "I bought travel insurance and I thought I would be getting global health insurance, but it turns out it's really travel insurance."
I guess because the NHS is paid through your taxes it may not have been so blindingly obvious to someone in the UK that anything similar to what he is asking for would have cost at least "300£ per month" (and that is assuming he is young and healthy) instead of "300£ for 18 months".
https://www.insureandgo.com/media/1228/iag_mf_pw_adv_0518.pd...
Page 20 says:
What you are covered for
We will pay up to the amount shown in the table of benefits on pages 4 and 5 for any costs for the following that are reasonable and necessary (see definition on page 14) as a result of you being unexpectedly injured or ill during your trip.
1. Emergency medical, surgical and hospital treatment and ambulance costs.
It also says:
Special exclusions which apply to section B
We will not cover the following:
2. Any treatment or surgery which we think you do not need immediately and can wait until you return home. Our decision is final.
12. Any medical treatment that you receive after you have refused the offer of returning to your home area, when, in the opinion of our medical advisors, you are fit to travel.
You can’t say “immediately” then take 4 days to reply, that’s unrealistic
I generally am sympathetic to the conclusion of the author that the intent was to screw him out of his money. Having working in insurance, I have heard from reliable sources that this is a common tactic and attitude at most insurance companies and I believe that to be true.
Then, on top of that, issues for the insured are compounded by bureaucratic snafus etc. which I find abhorrent given that the industry generally runs on claims of being there for you when they are needed.
I have said previously that it boggles my mind that insurance is legal, especially health insurance. I think car insurance and house insurance and such make more sense, but health insurance strikes me as being like an ugly Running Man style game show called "You Bet Your Life" and I go through life shaking my head at the idea that the world is apparently okay with this state of things.
At the highly ethical, respectable company where I worked, this was going on:
Periodically, some actuarial would have a cow about how some benefit was costing too much. The policy would get sent to the legal department for review. Legal would find some defensible creative new interpretation for the language of the benefit in question. They would announce that we has been paying this benefit "wrong" the entire time the policy existed. They would retrain the entire claims department to "pay the benefit correctly."
Even car insurances do this even if you think they don't. They'll look for a reason to not pay you a dime even if it's on legally uneven feet.
When an insurance is profit motivated, then maximizing profits is the first instincts. Maximizing profits happens by maximizing the deny:payout ratio. My car insurance did this by denying me reimbursement on a covered repair because I didn't go the the repair shop the insurance would have preferred (of which I was informed later and per law this doesn't matter anyway).
On the other hand, my statutory insurance has covered any of my eye-care costs with zero questions asked or simple policies usually simply copied from the relevant laws (1 free pair of glasses per calendar year, up to 200€ IIRC, 10€/day for hospital stay beyond medical emergency, etc).
The difference? Statutory insurance here is non-profit. Most insurances, even the private ones are non-profit. Very few insurances operate for profit at all.
Other than the management overhead, the fees collected go straight into covering medical costs or are invested into fonds as a reserve.
No, I don't think car insurance is better about being willing to pay. I just think that it actually helps encourage driver responsibility on the road and it's less of an issue if you can't afford a car than if you can't afford medical care. I don't think the ACA actually insisting that all Americans have health insurance encourages anyone to eat right, exercise etc.
You should be able to get insurance for your insurance. So when you need insurance and it doesn't pay out. Then that insurance company can go after the first one without having to resort to twitter or medium to shame them.
I think that's every insurance purchasers worry. The insurance companies have people who work for them to look for ways to deny your claim. But if the claim is straightforward, obvious and well documented, they will pay out unless you are dealing with unscrupulous insurers.
I think this a fallacy (unless most insurers are unscrupulous). It is very common for insurance companies to reject the claim initially and hope you'll go away.
After they arrived they both quickly got sick, not flu type symptoms but a weird spot on the neck, dizziness, and a couple other things I can't remember. It seemed like it could be serious so we took them in. Doctor examined them, said they were okay and we went home. Filed a claim with insurance.
Insurance asked for medical history. They literally don't have any, nor was it really relevant as they weren't diagnosed with anything. I think the insurance wanted to claim pre-existing conditions (which they don't cover). They still refused to pay anything. The bill wasn't even that much, maybe a few hundred dollars? It was less than what I paid the insurance!
Look up contact info here:
If this doesn't exist it seems like an opportunity worth investigating. Your premiums would essentially be paying for consumer research on insurers (this should also include so-called "extended warranties," which is a huge market). The relative costs of premiums for different insurers should drive consumers to more trustworthy insurers, which should improve the insurance marketplace for everyone.
It's possible it just may not be economically viable though.
Of course, whether THEY will pay out on a claim is a separate question.
I got cheap UK travel insurance, got my jaw broken in Australia, racked up huge hospital bills, hotel bills, curtailment bills...
They tried every trick in the book to not pay.
Although it took over a year the ombudsman made them repay every penny.
It seems you documented everything well - the ombudsman attaches a huge weighting to the medical opinions of treating doctors, so you have a good shot.
If you think you've found a neat hack like:
-- Skip buying regular health insurance
-- Buy a $300 12-month travel insurance instead
-- Spend the savings traveling around for a year while being fully covered for medical expenses
You're probably missing something.
These travel policies may notionally cover some level of urgent medical care but they're mostly designed (and priced for) cancelations due to injury/sickness/emergency, lost property, and getting you back home even if that requires a helicopter from some remote hillside (hopefully).
I'm sure there are 12 month policies you can buy that legitimately cover international health care for a 12 month period in addition to other travel-related risks but they'll cost a lot more.
He complains that "unless you are injured so horrifically that you cannot survive another moment without life saving surgery, odds are they’ll just tell you to fly home and have the surgery for free." But, to me, this is exactly what travel insurance is (which is why it's so cheap). Expecting fancy Singaporean hospitals unless it is strictly necessary seems totally unreasonable.
If they were not so communicative, he also basically decided to not get back to them on the vital "is he fit to fly?" issue for a few days (he had been OK to fly to Singapore after all), until after the surgery. There were a few days to go until the surgery, so that was enough time to get him back to the UK. Also, why hadn't he gotten in touch before? He texts pictures to friends, books flights, &c, and does not call the insurer or even ask somebody else to call on his behalf?
For what it's worth, I think he made the right decision in getting treatment in Singapore at his own expense, but that was still his decision.
And that's one of the huge issues!! Very often people don't read their policies so they have misunderstandings about their coverage!! This is a big problem!
I always read all of my policies, I suggest everyone else does the same. I want to be very clear what losses are covered and what my deductible will be before any losses occur. In fact, for legal documents, insurance policies are pretty easy to understand.
I really wish he included the text of his policy.
While I have sympathy for him, I think he got himself into a pickle when he flew to Singapore than claimed he was unable to fly. Yes, Singapore is a million times closer to Indonesia than the UK, but he should have known if he left Indonesia the insurance company would have expected him to return to the UK.
But it's travel insurance not "whole-world, any hospital, health insurance" (which I am sure you can buy, but not at the same price).
Maybe he was indeed in no shape to fly, but he should have argued it properly in those days. Even now, it seems more like "it would have been awful to fly economy" and not "it would have been dangerous".
As a patient what would you do? You have been given a medical opinion that it is unsafe to fly. I definitely don't think anything the guy did was unreasonable.
I just claim that it's reasonable for the company not to take it at face value as the doctor is not impartial and may have been considering a different standard for "not fit to fly." I certainly do not take it at face value. Could he have been put on a plane with extra medical assistance, for example? That may still have been cheaper than surgery.
I think what the guy did was the best choice if he can afford it, but I also think it's not unreasonable from the company to say that it was not what travel insurance covers.
On one hand, you have published medical standards saying that he is fit to fly. You also have your own doctors review the x-rays and find no reason that he can't fly.
On the other hand you have literally one sentence from an intern saying he isn't fit to fly.
It's a no brainer that you find him fit to fly and deny his claim.
>As a patient what would you do? You have been given a medical opinion that it is unsafe to fly. I definitely don't think anything the guy did was unreasonable
Personally, I go to my doctor and have him write a letter giving the specific reasons why I am unable to fly.
Insurance companies always felt like a Govt sanctioned scam. These companies are the real scammers that thrive by finding grey areas and loop holes to shirk their responsibility. Making this mandatory is just the government whoring its citizens out to these companies.
I cant imagine how I'd have dealt with a $20000 hole in my pocket. Come to think of it, I should seriously work on saving up for a "personal insurance fund" that I can draw from in cases of emergencies like this and not trust the insurance companies at all. Your story was a wake up call.
In Canada I've had zero problem making claims against health, dental, car, and home insurance. But pet insurance dragged their feet every step of the way on a very obviously valid claim. Definitely have no evidence but my first Avenue of thought is that pet insurance is probably less regulated.
See this CBC Marketplace piece on travel health insurance.
Basically, from what I recall, those medical forms are impossible to fill out correctly and they are used to deny claims.
They make you fill out medical forms that are written by lawyers and for lawyers. Any minor mistake on the form is grounds for denial for any claim. So if you forgot you stubbed your toe 11 months ago, your aneurysm isn't covered. For one man interviewed they used unintentionally undisclosed GI bleeding to deny his claim for a heart attack. Even though his GI bleeding had nothing to do with his heart attack.
The form is impossible to fill out 100% correctly 100% of the time. The issues are:
-Patients, especially the elderly, a unaware or forget some things in their medical file, or the doctor explains things a different way than the form asks.
-You have to read the fine print of all of the definitions because they have "gotcha" clauses, such as the definition of "cardiac treatment" including diagnostic tests that didn't result in any diagnosis.
-Travel agents/salespeople give incorrect information to people who have questions about the form, even though they aren't authorized to give any information or assistance.
They suggest contacting your doctor if you have questions filling out the form but even if you were a doctor with full access to the patient's medical file, the doctor might still get the "legalese" wrong.
Heck, when I had a tree fall on my house, the mortgage company was a bigger pain in the arse than the insurance company was to deal with. They came out, took some pictures, asked me to get a quote to fix it, and sent me a check in the mail.
Similar thing happened to me with car insurance. And, while I ended up paying more than I would have liked to get my gal bladder removed, that was largely because I bought a high deductible health insurance plan and knew that was a potential outcome.
And in some cases, enabled. Like city ordinances that say you cannot have a trampoline without having homeowner's insurance (though the number of insurers who will 'allow' you to have insurance is dropping - I say 'allow' because some don't say "If you have a trampoline, we won't cover any claims around it", but "If you have a trampoline, we won't offer you coverage at all").
No, I'm not (at all) advocating things like "auto insurance is theft", it's not - I see as a firefighter/paramedic the amount of damage that can be done to innocent third parties (persons and property).
But some insurance requirements are rather more the result of lobbying.
Some of us write personal blogs to get practice in writing :)
I have family in Canada who come and visit the US. They buy the insurance. One of them had a heart attach while in the US. Insurance paid something like $50,000 to put them on a private medical jet back to Canada. Far cheaper than having the care in the US.
I DO think that the gentleman made a bad decision saying that he was intent on staying in-country for 6 months afterwards. That's probably all the insurance company needed to think, "Yeah, this guy is using travel insurance as regular insurance"
Still, I do think the gentleman get the wrong end of the stick. I know I won't use this company, but now I really don't know who to use.
If the company didn't want to pay for care, they should have offered to fly you back home and back to SE Asia. That is, if it didn't impact your care in a negative way.
They were definitely trying to be cheap.
You do mention being a, "digital nomad" which sort of signals to me that you're not into coming back to wherever you started. I don't know the best type of health insurance you should set up for that, but I wouldn't be surprised if traveler insurance companies don't want to be thought of as, "regular health insurance, but for people traveling".
That said, as someone who has gone through life and used my share of insurance, I think the guys attitude is exactly backwards. There are huge numbers of people out there working insurance fraud schemes. I nearly ran into a couple that was trying to 'brake unexpectedly and get insurance payments.' Since I leave enough following distance I didn't hit them and they were quite irritated. It would have been funny if it were not sad.
So the insurance folks try to set up a lot of processes that minimize that fraud or make it harder on perpetrators.
This guy seems to have set out with the idea that insurance was trying to rip him off, and by operating under that assumption, taking actions (or not taking actions) that make himself look suspicious.
An alternative course of action might have been to familiarize himself with the policy before hand, and the processes and requirements he needs to meet when he needs to use it. And then set up things like putting into his wallet, "If I am being treated at a hospital or clinic please call this number and inform this insurance company xx xx xx xxxx" My sister in law is a nurse and we know a guy who works as a volunteer medic around the world, and when you come into the hospital they will always look through your wallet for identification and insurance information, help them out there.
Life is so much harder if you assume other people are "out to rip you off" or "get you" as your going in position. It can ruin possible relationships and it certainly damages business relationships.
Something that I carry on me when I'm travelling in my wallet is a piece of paper. It is written in both English and the predominant language of where I'm travelling. This paper is titled "Instructions and information for emergency personnel." It has my name, home address, blood type, allergies, short medical history, insurance numbers and international numbers to call for authorization. It also includes numbers of people who can be called for more information (like my primary care physician)
It is easy to make, write it up before the trip, run it through Google translate for the destination language, and fold it up into my wallet.
I got this idea from a friend of my father's who was a diplomat and so travelling a lot. He had stories about how it had saved his life in when he crashed his bike in the Alps. He too said that the last thing on your mind is explaining all of this stuff to people when he was injured. But once he realized that he didn't have to explain it, he only needed to let them know who to ask to get the information.
Accepted vs. rejected claims is meaningless on its own.
Since moving abroad I have gotten used to carrying my insurance card and calling their number before any elective insurable event takes place. I feel that the OP was unfortunate in finding this out the hard way.
Her insurance were excellent and paid the hospital, in full, directly. The insurance company is STA - http://www.statravel.com/travel-insurance.htm
On the other hand insurance is tricky at the best of times. (shill warning) In situations like this I put my trust in Costco because they have a track record of consistently providing a good deal the price.
I once knew a guy who ran a roofing business. He said that it was easy for him to insure his workers if they fell off the roof, but difficult to get coverage for when they hit the ground.
People should be able to expect that insurance is as advertised, and there's no "not really" in the fine print. UK courts are much less accepting of such things than the US. The infamous case is PPI misselling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_protection_insurance
In the case of an insurance policy the fine print is what you're buying.
Again, to be fair, the insurance company could have had a misleading policy and if that's the case they should be raked over the coals.
Singapore is not THAT expensive. Yes, it's first-rate, but not even close to highest COL[1]
[1] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
Singapore is a "top 10" city by any metric and that was the main point.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/03/19/the-ci... https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/03/21/measurin... https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/most-expensive-cities-...
I am from California, but I live in Vietnam now for nearly two years. Riding a motorbike here is almost a necessary part of the culture. I've also been to Bali, which has a similar, but not as extreme culture.
Unless you have prior expert experience on two wheels (I raced bicycles for 8 years and have ridden motorcycles on all terrains, for 10), or you are just really talented, the last thing you should do is get on two wheels in countries like these. You'll get injured or killed at some point.
I have World Nomads insurance and I really hope to not have to use it, ever.
And majority of expats get by fine without motorcycle racing experience, the biggest issue is as always driving while drunk.
In the US, you are literally a target. Road rage is a thing. Someone turning left or right on you happens all the time. In Vietnam, cars turn really slowly and usually in a predictable manner.
Now, the issue is that when things go wrong, they go really wrong. Vietnam has one of the highest rates of road deaths in the world [1] [2]. I think these numbers are actually low, because not all deaths even get reported. Also, not everyone dies... non-fatal accidents happen constantly here.
The other issue is that this is a relatively young country for people behind the wheel of a car. Cars have only been widely accessible here for the last ~10 years and it is growing. The level of skill for drivers is extremely low, the education testing is a joke. There is constantly videos of people driving their car/bus/truck through a group of people, house or off the road because they mistake the gas for the brake. Or even worse... side effect accidents... [3]
[1] https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/traffic-accidents-kill-ove...
[2] https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20180220/179-killed-in-t...
[3] https://www.facebook.com/vieclamtaixelaixe/videos/1972940609...
Which leads to my only gripe about this story. Why did he act though and not ask for help from the get go. Is there no international support in UK policies? Flying while sedated and bleeding...
Any insurer should see paying out as the prime deliverance of the customer promise. You don't skimp on paying out, but do try to be very careful about getting swindled. Getting called after 20k is spent would get the flags up in any insurer, good faith or bad.
My 2 cents would be that a good timeline and documented claim (like this blog post without the fluff) could still get him the 20k. It's an insured event, without the time for proper evaluation and without malice. That's a good basis for any claim.
More or less the same thing happened to me with a 6 months travel insurance. I had an unfortunate series of light medical problems that racked up about 1500 EUR. I was somehow lucky that I over-informed the insurer anytime anything concerned them and they pre-approved each doctor's visit. When it was time to get my money back, they denied the claim saying that I flew back home one month into the trip (and then left again) and that legally concluded my trip. That was, of course, non sense.
I wrote them a letter saying that if they don't return my money in 30 days, I will fill in a complaint with the insurance oversight authority in my country. They didn't so I did. The nice part is that this authority shoots first and asks questions later so in a few days I got a really passive aggressive letter saying they will be paying in full, that they already decided that a week before so there was no need for me to file the complaint (I was, of course, not informed) and they asked me to withdraw my complaint.
Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that insurers will nearly always err on the side of denying a claim if they can find an excuse to. That's why it's important to (a) read the fine print in the policies you purchase and (b) hire an attorney if you believe that you have been unfairly denied a claim.
Even if a claim is valid, insurers will also do whatever it takes to minimize their payouts. In this case, paying for transport to the UK for additional treatment would have been far cheaper than paying a Singaporean hospital for it, and so it's unsurprising that they pressured the claimant to hop on a flight instead of stay in Singapore since the injury did not contraindicate air travel (or at least there was significant disagreement as to that question).
My top "Gold" level travel insurance doesn't even cover my phone getting stolen while overseas.
The insurer definitely didn't handle it well but it would have gone much smoother if the expectations were properly set by reading the policy.
The travel insurance that comes for my credit card for example makes it quite clear that you have to contact the insurer as soon as possible after an accident and that in most cases, they'll opt to have you repatriated for care in your home country.
Yes; and that's a shitty thing to require when the person has a broken rib and a detached fingertip and is 20h+ away from the home country.
The problem wasn't that he didn't know the policy, it was the policy itself.
> “This is a general exclusion and doesn’t apply to you specifically. Our decision still stands with curtailment. No further medical input needed.
Why do you feel that he shares any part of the blame here? Why do you expect him to be an expert in reading and interpreting insurance policies in the middle of a medical emergency?
And not the one specifically dealing with broken bones?
>I wasn't going to ignore the advice of a DR who was holding my X-rays to appease an insurance company who doesn't give 2 shits about my health.
Which is not something anyone is going to argue about with you. Except, of course, those that have to write the $15K check. They are going to want more documentation that a one liner when standard medical advice says you can fly.
With all the responses you've generated here and the way you go about your argumentation I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you work for the insurer.
That's not how insurance works. They aren't going to pay for stuff on the say so of one doctor. The expectation is that they pay for treatment according to published and accepted standards of care. In this case, those say that you can fly with broken bones.
>With all the responses you've generated here and the way you go about your argumentation I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you work for the insurer.
Of course I don't work for the insurer. I am just an experienced backpacker that understands the concept of travel insurance.
> It's crystal clear from the way they conducted themselves that the insurance company would find any excuse to deny his claim
I see no evidence of that. What they offered was exactly what travel insurance is there for. That is, travel home for further treatment after a patient is stabilized. OP wanted to argue he wasn't stabilized. In response, they told him specifically what he needed to get from his doctor in order to justify his claim. As far as I know OP, for whatever reason, never bothered to get that.
IMHO, it's debatable whether or not you should be travelling with unset broken fingers. However, if all you bring to your side of the debate is a single sentence, you're going to lose.
We also don't know what their reaction to paying for the emergency services would be. OP, for reasons that are clear only to him, has decided not to claim ~$6,000 worth of covered expenses.
We will not cover the following:
2. Any treatment or surgery which we think you do not need immediately and can wait until you return home. Our decision is final.
That's what travel insurance is. It's there to pay for care until you can fly home. Accepting their flight home isn't voiding your insurance. It's getting the coverage you paid for.
Furthermore, the policy says clearly, until I CAN fly home. My DR had explicitly told me I could not. I wasn't going to risk my health for the sake of my arsehole insurance company and their bullshit attempts to wriggle out of paying.
Ask yourself, would YOU have ignored the advice of your DR, who knew your case personally, in favour of the "opinion" of a private company whose sole motivation is financial?
Basically, every service provider provides custom contracts with different exclusions, because that's the environment.
We need to get to a common set of expectations - like in a restaurant. Those expectations differ between countries/regions (is tipping expected? is water free?) but you have a common set of expectations that aren't governed by individual contracts for each restaurant.
On the other side: a random non-expert who needs some insurance, among a thousand other things going on in their life.
How much fault should assign to the second one?
I think of travel insurance as serving two main purposes.
- Insuring against not being able to take or having to cut short an expensive pre-paid trip or
- Evacuating you (e.g. a helicopter rescue) if you injure yourself in a remote place (especially if you're doing activities like mountain climbing).
Of course, it depends on the quality of your main medical insurance.
Getting there required 3 separate flights and 2-hr cab ride in the middle of nowhere Chile, which cost like $200.
After Kafkaesque paperwork my claim was initially denied. They said I didn't have my boarding pass from the 3rd flight (first 2 legs were Air Canada, easy to reproduce, but the third was some small, domestic Chilean airline with a barely-there website and a Spanish-only hotline).
Who saves a boarding pass at the start of a 2-week hiking trip through the Patagonian wilderness? Why is that third flight stub necessary, since I'm asking to be reimbursed for the cab ride when I got there (which I have documented proof for)?
I had to arrange for a conference call with a Spanish translator and the insurer (srsly), and eventually they paid up. But how many people go that far? It felt like the plot of "The Rainmaker".
The only other time I had to use travel insurance was when I lost my brand new iPod while changing planes in Seoul, South Korea. Even though the insurance covered "lost or stolen" they claimed they couldn't reimburse me because I hadn't filed a police report with the South Korean airport police (it was the middle of the night, I don't speak Korean and I didn't realize it was gone until later). And why do I need to have a police report if it was lost?
So I can definitely sympathize with how unscrupulous these travel insurance rackets are. That being said, I don't think asking him to fly home was that unreasonable. How are they supposed to validate the care he's getting there? He just going to dictate his care and hand over a massive bill from Singapore?
But usually this involves taking them to court and getting a settlement.
In the US, decent private medical plans typically cover emergency medical treatment when traveling. Pretty much the only time I buy travel insurance is when I either have large non-refundable payments because you never know when you'll have an accident or a family emergency or I'm doing some specific activity like a Nepal trek where an evacuation could be very costly.
I'd never buy travel insurance because of potentially lost luggage or extra flights/taxi rides.
This story seems tailor-made for them. It's an emotive story, connected to a wider issue ("Can YOU trust your travel insurer?"), and just in time for summer holidays!
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mg74 [1] https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/
If I find myself in a similar situation as in this article, is there some sort of "insurance professional handler" laywer kind of guy you can hire so that he does what is necessary and who knows all the traps, so that you have good chances of being covered?
But, without looking at what they offer in detail, I'd be pretty sure they're quite a bit different from normal travel insurance and are priced accordingly. This is about potentially saving your life when things go sideways in some remote corner of the globe.
Not hopefully paying you out some money because your tour operator went belly-up or you need to take an emergency flight home because of an injury or other problem (which is what most travel insurance emphasizes).
You’re awful quick to want to shame “this horrible company.”
Because I'd be willing to bet $100 that he did.
Am I sure? No. It is impossible to be sure. But I think it's highly likely considering the detail of the article and my difficulty in imagining why he'd put so much effort into a lie that could land him in hot water.
So, let's dump the idea that people can't take action no matter how small unless we are 100% sure of something. Almost nothing is 100%.
But things can be likely. Put your money where your mouth is.
If we get enough people in the pool, perhaps we can cut in the author of the article in return for documentation.