Should you buy travel insurance?
Here are some key questions to ask yourself to help decide whether or not to buy travel insurance when planning a trip:
1. Where are you going?
If you currently have health insurance, some policies will cover you for emergency care when you are travelling. You should check with your provider. What they won’t cover you for is medical evacuation. If you are in a developed country and need emergency surgery, you are probably fine as long as your US policy covers you. If you are in a third world country, you may not want to be operated on in their hospital and might need to be flown to better facilities right away by medical personnel. I don’t have to tell you that this is expensive. Bottom line, check your coverage and decide how you feel about the health care available where you are going. If you wouldn’t want to go to a local hospital, buy a Medical Evacuation Policy from Travel Guard or Medjet Assist so you can decide where you will be flown should an emergency arise. These are the only two companies that let YOU decide where you are taken.
2. How much does your trip cost?
If you buy a $200 plane ticket, don’t waste your money on insuring it. If you book a once in a lifetime cruise to the Galapagos for $8,000, spring for Cancellation and Interruption Insurance. That way if you break your leg a week before the trip or the tour company goes out of business, you won’t lose your hard earned vacation fund.
3. What are you carrying?
If you are checking a bag, it’s best not to pack anything fragile, expensive or irreplaceable but sometimes it can’t be avoided. If you must check on something valuable, spend an extra few bucks on Excess Valuation insurance with your airline which will cost you $1 per $100 of value.
Peter Greenberg, the Today Show travel editor has written a great article on this topic that I have taken some basic points from here but if you want more extensive information, you should read it in its entirety here:
Also, you can see what policies cost at the two travel insurance companies mentioned above by visiting their websites here:
