For what it's worth, here's a little anecdote about travel insurance.
In 2017 my wife and I went to Cuba for a conventional holiday but with the possibility of doing a bit of caving, and we took out travel insurance with a firm called Sports Cover Direct, who covered me (with a modest excess) in spite of my having had open-heart surgery a couple of years previously (and eye surgery about 6 years before that).
In the event, I had a very serious nose-bleed, something that?s never happened to me before or since, either as a child or as an adult . . . at one point I seriously thought that I was going to ?bleed out?. Anyway, I was hospitalized for two days (a great ?bolt-on extra? to our Cuban holiday. The staff were brilliant and well-trained, but the system was obviously strapped for cash ? never a gain will I whinge about the NHS!), and ran up a bill ? no doubt modest by Western standards ? of about ?750. But because the hospital was some 80 km from where we were staying, my wife ran up a further bill for taxi fares of ~?120, for which the taxi drivers refused point-blank to give her receipts. So when I made a claim on our travel insurance it was more in hope than expectation that I mentioned the taxi fares in a covering letter; a couple of days later we got a cheque for the full amount, including taxi fares. They deducted the excess, but added on an extra ?100 for some reason that I now can?t remember, so they effectively paid out the claim in full . . . which really impressed us.
It maybe wasn?t the cheapest travel insurance . . .but then again, there?s an article in yesterday's Observer about the perils of relying on cheap travel insurance.
In 2017 my wife and I went to Cuba for a conventional holiday but with the possibility of doing a bit of caving, and we took out travel insurance with a firm called Sports Cover Direct, who covered me (with a modest excess) in spite of my having had open-heart surgery a couple of years previously (and eye surgery about 6 years before that).
In the event, I had a very serious nose-bleed, something that?s never happened to me before or since, either as a child or as an adult . . . at one point I seriously thought that I was going to ?bleed out?. Anyway, I was hospitalized for two days (a great ?bolt-on extra? to our Cuban holiday. The staff were brilliant and well-trained, but the system was obviously strapped for cash ? never a gain will I whinge about the NHS!), and ran up a bill ? no doubt modest by Western standards ? of about ?750. But because the hospital was some 80 km from where we were staying, my wife ran up a further bill for taxi fares of ~?120, for which the taxi drivers refused point-blank to give her receipts. So when I made a claim on our travel insurance it was more in hope than expectation that I mentioned the taxi fares in a covering letter; a couple of days later we got a cheque for the full amount, including taxi fares. They deducted the excess, but added on an extra ?100 for some reason that I now can?t remember, so they effectively paid out the claim in full . . . which really impressed us.
It maybe wasn?t the cheapest travel insurance . . .but then again, there?s an article in yesterday's Observer about the perils of relying on cheap travel insurance.
