Travel Medical Insurance and Paranoia | Page 3 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Travel Medical Insurance and Paranoia

I... my BMO world elite travel mastercard has coverage.

I'm a BMO World Elite customer as well, and while I'm not shilling for them at all, I have direct experience with their accident insurance. A rider in our group went down on the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC, in a very remote area. They ended up in a clinic and had diagnostics run (x-rays etc.) and ended up with broken ribs. I literally called the WE number, confirmed some information and handed the phone over to the folks in the clinic.

The rider never had to do any paperwork; never say a bill or invoice and everything ended up completely covered. It was all handled directly between the clinic and the WE call centre.

For folks like myself that ride in remote areas, the transport to the hospital itself can be insanely expensive, and that's even before any actual medical expenses. Riding with insurance is the responsible thing to do.
 
Agree with everyone on insurance. This thread reminded me to check mine; between work, CAA and Visa Infinite, looks like I have 2.5million for 15 days min.
When I get to 65, it drops to 4 days away. That's not much of a vacation!
 
I'm a BMO World Elite customer as well, and while I'm not shilling for them at all, I have direct experience with their accident insurance. A rider in our group went down on the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC, in a very remote area. They ended up in a clinic and had diagnostics run (x-rays etc.) and ended up with broken ribs. I literally called the WE number, confirmed some information and handed the phone over to the folks in the clinic.

The rider never had to do any paperwork; never say a bill or invoice and everything ended up completely covered. It was all handled directly between the clinic and the WE call centre.

For folks like myself that ride in remote areas, the transport to the hospital itself can be insanely expensive, and that's even before any actual medical expenses. Riding with insurance is the responsible thing to do.

A minimum of $50,000 would have been covered by vehicle insurance medical benefits and if you pay more you get more. I could up mine to a million for about a hundred dollars. If the injuries were sustained by falling down a flight of stairs he would have been out of luck. Read up on your medical benefits. They are the most expensive chunk of your insurance premium.
 
Agree with everyone on insurance. This thread reminded me to check mine; between work, CAA and Visa Infinite, looks like I have 2.5million for 15 days min.
When I get to 65, it drops to 4 days away. That's not much of a vacation!

When you hit 65 it becomes a whole new world. If you have parents that travel and are in that group and you hope to inherit the family castle, make sure they know the risks.
 
A minimum of $50,000 would have been covered by vehicle insurance medical benefits and if you pay more you get more. I could up mine to a million for about a hundred dollars. If the injuries were sustained by falling down a flight of stairs he would have been out of luck. Read up on your medical benefits. They are the most expensive chunk of your insurance premium.

Mmhmm. Had they made an insurance claim. But since it was an at-fault, single vehicle accident with cosmetic damage to the bike, it was better under those circumstances to leave vehicular insurance out of it.
 
Mmhmm. Had they made an insurance claim. But since it was an at-fault, single vehicle accident with cosmetic damage to the bike, it was better under those circumstances to leave vehicular insurance out of it.

Good point. However some policies only cover what isn't covered by someone else. Good to know the options.
 
When I get to 65, it drops to 4 days away. That's not much of a vacation!

Yeah the annual plans then are best. I found Royal Bank good and quick to sign up - better than Meloche I used before ( TD )
 
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I just bought travel medical insurance at the TD Bank today and I made sure I read all the fine print. They do pay all your emergency health benefits direct to your care givers. However, the policy states that they expect you to call them before you seek non-emergency medical care. It is only during emergency medical care that you can call them after the fact. Yes they don't cover pre-existing conditions, and they are some times very vague as to what constitutes a pre- existng conditon, but you can worry your self sick about these things. As far as I know all the insurance companies do business this way.
 
It's really cancer that is the bugaboo....luckily as of this year I'm past the five year mark.

That's awesome news. I'm sure you wake up every morning with a "Carpet Diem" attitude.
 
Not really - never bothered me except for the first week before I knew what it was. I had a good full life but was glad it was something straight forward and treatable. It DOES pay to pay attention to small changes tho.
Ontario Health care was superb. You can read about the experience here.
http://www.cancerforums.net/threads/8786-Diffuse-Large-B-cell-Lymphoma-Feb-09-and-CHOP-R-diary

One in two men and one in three women will get some form of cancer in their lifetime. Never hurts to know a bit.
Clients did not know until I was in remission - kept working and riding through most of it. Not fun but not a horror either.
Was good I could sneak the bike into the parking lot for free - saved me a good chunk of change during the radiation therapy which was 17 days in a row.
Home was a 5 minute ride away.

The insurance companies just ream those with cancer in remission. :(
 
I just bought travel medical insurance at the TD Bank today and I made sure I read all the fine print. They do pay all your emergency health benefits direct to your care givers. However, the policy states that they expect you to call them before you seek non-emergency medical care. It is only during emergency medical care that you can call them after the fact. Yes they don't cover pre-existing conditions, and they are some times very vague as to what constitutes a pre- existng conditon, but you can worry your self sick about these things. As far as I know all the insurance companies do business this way.

The vagueness is why I put "Paranoia" in the title. Insurance: coverage by contract whereby one party agrees to indemify or guarantee another against loss by a specified contingent event or peril

Where are the guarantees in these policies?

How does one determine risk factor without statistics?

Collisions have a lot of statistical evidence behind them but you don't need travel insurance to cover a collision injury. That is covered by your vehicle medical benefits. It's only $50K but you can buy up to a million for a relatively small premium.

Travel medical insurance is needed for non-vehicular injuries and illnesses. While older travellers will have more risk items even young travellers are susceptable to appendix attacks, food poisoning, ebolisms, diabetic issues, etc. The odds of whether this will happen to you can be determined by researching available medical data.

The problem is that one can't statistically determine whether your insurance policy will pay out if something happens. Does company "A" pay out 90 percent of the time or 20 percent of the time?

The insurance companies have the data but it is confidential. We have to struggle with anecdotal eveidence. The parachute may or may not open.

I spoke with a rep from a travel insurance association that had posted industry statistics but he admiited that he just made up numbers. One statistic was that five percent of claims were denied. One chance in twenty of losing your house scares me.

Ten percent of those travelling filed claims so the math makes it look like one person in two hundred loses his house. Still too much risk for me.

Obviously the safest thing to do is take the TTC between work and home and never venture out. Then you die of boredom.

All I want is access to facts so I can do my own risk evaluation.
 
It's the job of the insurance companies to determine risk ....
No bank would risk the bad publicity denied claims for travel medical WHEN THE RULES HAVE BEEN FOLLOWED.

Where people get into trouble is going in for non- emergency medical without contacting their insurer.
 
Just found this thread and it makes your head just spin. I go to the US quite often by Car and motorcycle. After a ton of research CAA+ worked out to be the best one, along with VISA Infiniti Card coverage. BTW, CAA covers things like California Superbike School because it's not "racing" it's "school". We contacted them directly about this point is it's covered
 
CAA keeps floating to the top. Even with a few medical issues my rates aren't deal breakers. One big plus is that they pay the bill instead of you paying first, waiting to be re-imbursed. That actually helps them keep costs down because they will have corporate rates with the big hospitals.
 
Ummm the cancelled it on the basis prescriptions she didn't recall ( do you? ) and never used.

That's called predatory ...especially after initial approval.
Sorry but it's exactly that kind of smarmy dodging responsibility for good faith applications based on something that had zero to do with the medical treatment needed.

Providing insurance is a government mandated privilege and in theory they are supposed to act like a bank - in fact - the insurance industrial in general takes for granted they have "special privileges".

Like the banks they need a wake up call as to who actually grants them their charter.
This kind of action is predatory and you can bet it will cost them.

I ran into the same sort of crap trying to get a definition of what coverage for a cancer survivor and several were just weasels over it even tho I've been cancer free for 5 years and there was no indicaion during treatment there was any spread.
Even my Onco scratched his head over their vague descriptions.

It would be like having your auto insurance cancelled because you missed an oil change.
The insurance company in question treated their policy holder in what I would consider a fraudulent manner.

The entire US medical and medical insurers need to be brought up short. Far too much unacceptable predatory behaviour.

We have medical insurance we all pay for here.
Can you imagine walking into and having to pay if you forgot to list a prescription?? You'd howl to the moon.....what they - the insurance company did was wrong....indefensible.

[h=1]Insurance regulatory law[/h]From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Insurance regulatory law is the body of statutory law, administrative regulations and jurisprudence that governs and regulates the insurance industry and those engaged in the business of insurance. Insurance regulatory law is primarily enforced through regulations, rules and directives by state insurance departments as authorized and directed by statutory law enacted by the state legislatures. However, federal law, court decisions and administrative adjudications also play an important role.[SUP][1][/SUP]
[h=2]Contents[/h] [hide]​


[h=2]Purpose
[edit][/h]

Insurance is characterized as a business vested or affected with the public interest.[SUP][2][/SUP] Thus, the business of insurance, although primarily a matter of private contract, is nevertheless of such concern to the public as a whole that it is subject to governmental regulation to protect the public’s interests.[SUP][1][/SUP]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_regulatory_law
 
sorry I read that, she is a retired medical professional that did not fill out a basic medical form correctly. Are they long and complicated? not really. Is she an idiot? quite possibly

Every insurer has a different policy. There's problems with all of them. Seniors have more time to travel. Seniors also have memory problems.

The problem with a contract is that the wording has to be very specific or the contract is subject to misinterpretation and therefore useless.
Also the policies are written by committees of medical experts, lawyers and money men. A GP wouldn't understand the legal jargon.

Some GPs won't give you their time to help review your policy application. If they advise wrongly they could end up getting sued along with the insurance company.

BTW The unfilled and unused prescriptions count because they are health indicators. An MD didn't write them up for fun.

The key problem is that a person can't get pre-approved for travel insurance. Under 65 the forms are more simple but still have exclusions particularly for pre-existing conditions. You get approved or not after the event when it's too late.

How bad is the travel med problem? Most reputable insurance agents won't touch the stuff.

Something else that bothers me is that Canadian hospital costs aren't cheap but OHIP etc picks up the tab. Canadian hospitalization rates are let's say 2/3s of the US rates. So why doesn't OHIP pick up 2/3 of the cost instead of the couple of hundred a day they offer?
 
sorry I read that, she is a retired medical professional that did not fill out a basic medical form correctly. Are they long and complicated? not really. Is she an idiot? quite possibly

At first I was going to slam you a bit for the "Idiot" remark but yeah she should have known better on the meds.

However consider that the premium formula is a bit like your vehicle policy. You get a base rate based on your age and an adder for each ailment or ticket. With vehicle insurance being young goes against you. With medical old age goes against you.

If you are asked if you have ever been treated for chest pains do you answer yes or no? The question is not clarified.

If you answer yes you get hit with a big surcharge even if the pains were from a bruised rib. A six pack of similarly vague questions could up the tab by $1000.00

If you answer "No" to the chest pain and have to make a claim for a gall bladder issue the insurance company could deny your claim. You assert that it was rib pain and they say the ribs are part of the chest.

Who wins??? The one with the most lawyers.
 

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