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Travel insurance problem
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#1 - 2013-02-25 12:04:10 UTC
It would appear I have come up against a problem that effects many people who have relatives who are suffering from a terminal illness.

My grandmother is approaching 80 and has been basically told that the odds are not good that she will last 6 months. She is obviously not planning on travelling anywhere but it has put my wife and I in a rather tricky situation when it comes to booking our holiday.

Most travel companies expect full payment of the holiday up front and say their default position is that the money is non-refundable in the event of a cancellation, which I can understand. So the next port of call is the travel insurance which says it will refund your costs in the event you cannot go due to a death in the family, great. However, they all stipulate that you are not covered if you could reasonably expect that the death was going to happen at the time of booking. The doctors have officially given her a time-frame estimate now and so I think the insurance company could quite easily refuse to pay out.

So we basically cannot protect ourselves in the event that we have to cancel the holiday to go to my grandmother's funeral. If it happens that way we stand to lose a substantial amount or we simply cannot book any more holidays until she passes but she could potentially live for several more years.

Has anyone else had to deal with something like this? I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Brujo Loco
Brujeria Teologica
#2 - 2013-02-25 13:50:41 UTC
Interesting, from this side of the pond, we never care much about what the future will entail. I´m beginning to ponder the strange realities of insurance, future, retirement and etc and how it weighs on a lot of people up there.

On my part I have traveled abroad and have had accidents happen (hey, that´s life) without any insurance and to be honest, unless you have some sort of very bad accident (in which case you will die anyway ) or a truly disabling one (in which case you will have to stay for at least a couple weeks) , insurance is not really needed (of any kind) . And I´m an average min wage worker in a latinamerican country.

If you want to plan your holidays, why don´t you travel to a nearby country? In case something happens you can return easily?

Your conundrum is (and I am honestly bearing my heart here) alien to me. I really want to understand it, but you can´t really determinate your life on the whims of something possibly happening friend.

If I determined my life on the whims of possibilities I would have never moved out of my home, married, settled in a foreign country and spent 2 years jobless then getting a job. I mean, life is full of uncertainties, why bother?

You could die at any moment, this reality I live with all the time. It´s liberating.

Friends, family, pets, relationships, jobs, countries die or get torn apart. I plan as a much as the next regular joe for the future saving some $$$ but honestly, worrying about possibilities is ... to me anyway (I respect your distress) a complete waste of time.

In another timestream I would still be living in Venezuela, a member of a prestigious social club, with my own consulting office and enjoying the niceties of private practice and the ability to finish my PHD in Clinical Psychology at my Alma Mater.

Reality now is so different, and yet, here I am, still enjoying life, loving my loved ones and working and building a "future", for the sheer need of having something to eat and a roof to sleep comfortably and free of distress.

Life is just not this thing we can control at all. You might plan this or that, and if chances are good, boom! "Perfect" Life for you. But reality is something else.

The vagaries of life have been discussed upon by many, called "Moral Luck" ... you can read a small essay on that here .

In short, and very condensed form you can live a good life regardless of luck, yet luck heavily influences your life.

By this basis, no matter how much you control aspects of your life you are still slave to the whims of fate.

Modern thinkers, including some of my brethren will point out how the Individual can rise from this stream and how you can lead a successful life , problem is, the ones getting successful are them, selling you their books, tape and dvds as you remain the same person.

Fact is, life is simple, we live , then we die, the interim is yours to enjoy, no matter how much you think you control it.

And wow. I guess I diverged a bit from the point I was trying to entail.

But your question, is a question that can be extrapolated to life itself, for within it lies the roots of human determinism vs free will. An ages old argument.

my TLDR to you:

Plan your trip regardless.If cancelling such a trip would leave you broke if you have to cancel it due to unforeseen circumstances , then you should be doing something else instead of that, perhaps paying debts? I don´t see why cancelling your trip midway will leave you economically vulnerable without insurance unless you are expending way beyond your limits, and that my friend, is a big no no.

Also, don´t worry much, you , like all of us, are a victim of your own environment.

Inner Sayings of BrujoLoco: http://eve-files.com/sig/brujoloco
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#3 - 2013-02-25 14:06:55 UTC
An interesting reply to say the least, thank you for taking the time to write it Loco.

I am UK based which means most holidays abroad include either a plane or a boat which makes returning quickly rather difficult.

In terms of what you are saying about travel insurance, I think we must come from very different worlds! Travelling without insurance from the UK is extremely risky since you run the risk of being landed with hundreds of thousands of pounds in medical bills if you require something like an air rescue or specialist life saving treatment.

Your point about not being able to control life is exactly why insurance companies exist.

For my particular issue the risk is that I lose the cost of the holiday which, although not financially crippling, is something I would prefer not to happen. Also, I would not be cutting my trip short, only cancelling if my grandmother passes before I am due to leave. In such a case the entire cost of the holiday is forfeit.

But back on point, although there are companies who will insure critially ill people to travel (at a premium) it appears there are no companies who will insure you if you are a relative of such a person and your holiday is dependent upon them. It seems odd because the risk is identical to the insurer in my mind.
Indahmawar Fazmarai
#4 - 2013-02-25 14:50:08 UTC
Houm...

You're right to think that you're in a bad spot in terms of insurance. Insurances cover unexpected events, and they are very strict on that. If your granny hadn't been diagnosed and given a life expectancy, you would be Ok with most insurances around. Insurors will refuse to cover your risk if there is a rational expectation that she may die even if you hide that fact from them.

But then, let me suggest you a different approach... some side thinking, to say so.

You know, airplane tickets are not non-refundable per se. CHEAP airplane tickes are non-refundable, and that's a difference you could play to your advantage. You can get a total refund, no questions, for any Yankee (Y) level fare in any standard airline.They're awfully expensive compared to standard economy fares, but you could buy your tickets on one, and wait for the last days before your other services (hotel and such) also hit their cancellation penalty deadline. Then you could cancel the Yankee fare, get a refund and buy new tickets for whatever the lowest economy fare available at that time. In case your granny dies, you just cancel everything and you get your refund for the tickets.

Also there are some high level economy fares that are refundable before departure, but that would depend on details like the airline and destination/route plus the specific fare rules.
Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
#5 - 2013-02-25 17:13:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Akita T
There's two "classic" but bad approaches you can take:
- you either pre-arrange and pre-pay the funeral for whenever she dies, even if it happens in your absence, and just go on the vacation no matter what happens (after all, if she's dead, she can't care what you do anymore ; the rest of the family might be another matter though)
or
- you don't go on any holidays at all until after she dies (and end up resenting her because of it if she keeps on living much longer)

The sane but difficult and/or guaranteed slightly more expensive options would be to either:
- go to a travel insurance agency and fully disclose your situation (you might actually need to get a written appraisal from her doctors), then ask the insurance agency about how much extra you would have to pay for insurance that WOULD specifically cover your particular situation ; keep trying at several other agencies until one would give you a written consent for a price you'd be willing to pay... I find it at least odd that they would insure the sick but not the relatives, there's GOT to be at least one insurance company wiling to do it, you probably just didn't insist hard enough
or
- go on an UNBOOKED (or very short-notice-booked) vacation with no fixed duration (only go somewhere where you can go by car+ferry or some other form of transport where you can buy a reasonably affordable ticket just before you leave, only stay at hotels that usually have several empty rooms most of the time, and so on and so forth); it might end up noticeably more expensive overall, but there's a very good chance that in the event of a plan cancellation you get to keep or recover most or even all of your money - what's wrong with, say, taking the train (I mean, the chunnel is still operational, no?) or the car (there's enough ferries between the UK and France or the Netherlands AFAIK) to somewhere in southern France or elsewhere relatively close in Europe where it's potentially nice to stay on a vacation, and seeking housing whenever you get there only ?

Akita T evewiki profile | | | Build your own EVE-ready PC
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#6 - 2013-02-25 17:25:47 UTC
Akita T wrote:
There's two "classic" but bad approaches you can take:
- you either pre-arrange and pre-pay the funeral for whenever she dies, even if it happens in your absence, and just go on the vacation no matter what happens (after all, if she's dead, she can't care what you do anymore ; the rest of the family might be another matter though)
or
- you don't go on any holidays at all until after she dies (and end up resenting her because of it if she keeps on living much longer)

The sane but difficult and/or guaranteed slightly more expensive options would be to either:
- go on an UNBOOKED (or very short-notice-booked) vacation with no fixed duration (only go somewhere where you can go by car+ferry or some other form of transport where you can buy a reasonably affordable ticket just before you leave, only stay at hotels that usually have several empty rooms most of the time, and so on and so forth); it might end up noticeably more expensive overall, but there's a very good chance that in the event of a plan cancellation you get to keep or recover most or even all of your money
or
- go to a travel insurance agency and fully disclose your situation (you might actually need to get a written appraisal from her doctors), then ask the insurance agency about how much extra you would have to pay for insurance that WOULD specifically cover your particular situation ; keep trying at several other agencies until one would give you a written consent for a price you'd be willing to pay

Thanks

It's the family that's the issue (plus my own concience).

Not going on holidays is not an option in my mind since I'd be allowing an illness to dictate my life.

The holiday is already booked, so no-go there. Unfortunately I had not taken out travel insurance at the time I booked it.

As for that last option, I've already tried it. As far as the insurance companies are concerned that situation is uninsurable unless I have a note from her doctor giving their opinion that she is unlikely to have an difficulties in the time frame. Given that she is already in a hospice for the terminally ill, it's unlikely I could get that. It doesn't matter how much I offer to pay them.

I even tried going to the British Inurance Brokers Association and even they couldn't find a company would would touch it (and that includes the specialist ones who will actually cover terminally ill patients to fly, oddly).

Seems we're bang outta luck and will just have to absorb the cost if things go wrong which would mean my grandmother dying, missing my holiday and losing a significant amount of money. That would be a sucky day.