Travel insurance needed or not?
 

For the very first time on our travels to Asia, I'm actually entertaining the notion of not getting travel insurance for our Japan trip (although when we go to place like Europe, I never purchase it.)

The reason I don't think it's that necessary for Japan is that our flights are award tickets (about $40 in taxes each) and ALL of our hotels are pay-upon-arrival. The redeposit fee on our tix (if we canceled) is waived due to our frequent flier status.

The only real tangible advanced purchase cost I have is the JR passes I got for us last week...and those, I believe, are partially refundable if unused.

I know the additional medical coverage is helpful but med evac is much less a concern in a place like Japan.

Guess I could just insure us for the cost of the passes and get the added bonus of the luggage, medical and delay benefits.

I know insurance is VERY popular on here--and like I said, I've gotten for every single on of our SE Asia trips. This trip felt a bit more of an exception, though.

Thoughts?

"med evac is much less a concern in a place like Japan."

That's probably true if you mean transport to the nearest hospital. It is NOT true for repatriation - return to your home country. One reason I don't use DAN for my medevac insurance is because they don't include repatriation - when I broke my wrist in Switzerland I got myself to the hospital, but tenweb.com got me home, and DAN told me they would not have done so. Getting home would be a lot more expensive if you were more seriouly incapacitated.

I don't insure for anything except medevac unless I'm taking a tour, and not always then.

Insurance is always a bad buy, unless you have reason to believe that you're far more likely than the average traveler to need it. In other words, if you take 10 trips and buy insurance for each one, it's almost certain that you will pay more in premiums than you will collect in payouts.

The only type of insurance for which there's economic justification is to insure against a loss that would be financially devastating. Those who buy trip cancellation insurance would be better off buying lottery tickets. (Most of those pay out around 50%; travel insurance generally pays out less.)

Filmwill, I always self-insure (with the exception of very cheap med-evac insurance). I suppose that if I had purchased a very expensive package somewhere I might consider it, but I'm with DonTopaz on this. Of course, I can't right now imagine a very expensive package I'd buy...

I'm not sure why Japan feels like an exception - you say yourself you never insure Europe trips.

It doesn't, Kathie. Hence the reason I was saying I was inclined *not* to insure this time around.

Places like Burma, Laos and certain parts of Thailand we've visited absolutely do, which is why we've bought insurance for most of our other trips to Asia (SE Asia in particular.)

I guess I was just trying to get a gut-check that I wasn't under-thinking this all.

Sounds like I'm on the right path.

"right path"? I don't know, but you are on the same path I'm on anyway.

Older travelers from the US will often take out travel insurance for medical and medivac. Medicare in most cases does not cover expenses outside of the United States, so this is a big driver.

True, that is a reason to have travel medical insurance. And whether you are Medicare age or not, you need to know if your medical insurance covers urgent treatment in foreign countries. Fortunately, mine does.

One of my (many) objections to travel insurance policies is that they want to sell you everything - not just medical and med-evac, but excess baggage insurance, trip delay and cancellation, etc, etc. when most people in most circumstances don't need all of that.

we never buy trip insurance, although we do have med-evac insurance

My Medicare supplement policy from Blue Cross covers foreign travel. (Not the Medicare policy, but the supplement policy).

shelleyk - how much coverage does it give you? IBM is about to dump its Medicare-eligible retirees on the open market, and from what I have read Medigap policies only cover you for 60 days travel and have a $50,000 lifetime cap.

thursdaysd-I just called Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA to confirm what I thought-I am covered in a foreign country for everything Medicare would have paid for in this country with no limit and no cap. I would have to pay overseas and then be reimbursed, and I would have to provide very specific translated information to get reimbursed. FYI-This policy costs almost $2300 per year, above what Medicare takes out of SS for the basic policy.

shelleyk - sounds like a good policy. Thanks for the info. Not sure the policy will be available in NC, though. I won't get the full details until after Oct 1. (Seems crazy to me that policies are different in different states! Since I'm thinking of going nomad after I sell my house, this could be a real problem.)

I always get travel insurance with medical evacuation (repatriation to the US). I can't financially take the hit of having to buy a last minute ticket home or even potentially paying for medical care in another country. I carefully budget my trips and travel insurance gives me peace of mind. If I'm on the first day of a 10 day trip and break my leg or have a death in the family or whatever may happen, I want to have the option of returning home. A bit paranoid? Yeah, probably, but I'll continue to buy it.

We never thought much about medical evacuation until we were on a plane from South Africa to the US where an entire section of seats had been curtained off (if I remember it was about 5-6 rows and 3 seats across). There was a gurney atop the seatbacks and an unfortunate person with IV tubes. There were also 2 medical personnel and lots of medical supplies.

So it might not be one ticket you would need but rather 15 - 18 tickets. I used to self insure but now religiously get medical evacuation insurance.

All good input, but Japan (one would think) has medical care and facilities equal to or better than the US, no?

Yes...medical care is excellent. But say you had an accident and broke your neck or something tragic that required a long or permanent hospital stay. Wouldn't you rather go home? And wouldn't your insurance quit paying for care in a foreign country after some limit of time and/or money?

Agree with KimJapan, ovenbird and Hobbert. We always get insurance for peace of mind: for med-evac in places with poor facilities and repatriation for everywhere else. We've have to use it several times - once, sadly, because of the death of a family member and, just recently when we had to cancel our trip because of a minor injury.

Insurance is not just for catastrophic occurrences. We have a friend who broke her ankle in the Turks and Caicos and her insurance paid for her to to upgrade to first class for the trip home.

How does one only get repatriation insurance? We don't "need" anything else for this trip.

I would start here: http://www2.sevencorners.com/insurance-for-travelers/

Or here: http://medjetassist.com/membership/s...rmdetails.aspx

Or here: http://travelersemergencynetwork.com/ (This is the outfit that got me home from Switzerland.)