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.