Traveling Abroad
Will you be traveling abroad? Vacations presently have obviously been affected by the Coronavirus. We’ve heard the horror stories about cruise ships which I addressed in a recent post as well. In general, when you’re traveling outside the country, travel insurance is always a good idea. Here’s why:
One example of what you’d never think of when you’re packing a suitcase to go on a family vacation: Medevacs are incredibly expensive.
Medevacs? Yes, when you’re flown from an accident to a hospital, or from one hospital to another. I know because I have to litigate them for car accidents all the time because sometimes people get medevac’d and the insurance companies say they didn’t need to be flown and so deny the claim. The insurance company states ‘they could have taken a regular ambulance,’ because the price can be $50-60,000 and if your insurance doesn’t cover it and they come after you for it, that’s a huge expense. If you’re traveling abroad, and they have to take you to a hospital with a serious injury, many times medevac is how they do it. In the United States it’s minimum $25,000. You go somewhere else in Europe or Asia or whatever, it can go as high as $50 or $60,000.
Travel Insurance
So have travel insurance. Sometimes people just quickly opt out because they only think about the cancellation of plans issue. But travel insurance goes far beyond that, including for medevac situations. It’s also not guaranteed that your health insurance covers you in other countries, so you want to be sure of that before you travel. There are horror stories of people that their insurance doesn’t go through and they don’t have enough money to pay their medical bill. It’s something many people don’t think about and just assume they’re covered. You just kind of assume that your medical insurance is covering. So again, I’m not saying it won’t, it’s just that it’s a reason to look at it before you go. And to get travel insurance when you’re going out of the country.
Joe Stanley is a personal injury attorney with the Team at Stanley Law. Stanley Law Offices are in Syracuse, Watertown, Binghamton, Rochester, and Montrose, PA. If you’ve been seriously injured, don’t go it alone. Phone. 1-800-608-3333.
