Saturday, May 5, 2018

Life With Chronic Conditions: Health Insurance When You Travel


With summer vacations rapidly approaching, many people are planning trips.  If you are traveling overseas or to other parts of the country, which your health insurance may not cover, it’s important to look into obtaining travelers insurance for:

• Trip Cancellation: If you have to cancel your trip at the last minute, this will cover the cost of the trip.

• Travel health: Your current health plan may not cover medical care in other parts of the country or the world.

• Medical evacuation: Covers the cost of transportation to high-quality health care facilities, in the event of an emergency. This type of insurance is important if you will be traveling in rural or remote areas.

Keep in mind that travel insurance plans have an automatic exclusion for pre existing conditions. However, some travel insurance companies offer an exclusion waiver. Check out Travel Insurance Review’s Pre-Existing Condition Coverage.  This article also provides a comparison of how much coverage various companies provide.

Note that you must be medically stable when you purchase your travel plan. With an existing medical condition, the safest course of action is to get your physician's certification that you're fine to travel before you book your trip. Allianz Global Assistance’s travel insurance requires you to be medically able to travel on the day you buy your policy. It doesn't matter if you expect to be able to travel in the future, or if your doctor says you should be able to travel by the time you're scheduled to leave. Allianz Travel Insurance

Nearly all plans require you to purchase your travel insurance soon after making the first trip payment and you must cover the full length of your trip not just a portion of it.

If you do need to receive medical attention, the travel insurance company will “look back” at your medical records. While this will vary by insurance carrier, the “look back” period is typically within 60-180 days prior to purchasing a comprehensive plan or within 90 days - 3 years prior to the departure date listed on a medical plan. In order to have an approved claim, the condition must have been stable within the look back period. "Stable" means that the condition has not changed or worsened in any way – no new diagnoses or treatments, no new medications, no treatments of any kind, and no pending or initiated treatments, scans, or test results. Insure My Trip 


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