Insurance - To Buy Or Not To Buy?

[BananaAnna]

Too bad these folks didn't have insurance......

 

http://www.northjersey.com/news/0331...ge=1&scpromo=1

 

 

One main reason I get insurance for every cruise is that, in the the event of a medical emergency I'd rather my family spend their time and energy getting me medical assistance, not figuring out how to pay for it! And I buy insurance not so much for a potential medical visit, but in case of an medical evacuation of any sort.

[Jasalth]

Ugg - that sounds like no fun! I've read a lot of posts here over the years where people say "I'm young and healthy" and think they won't ever need the insurance. You just never know. I'm 39, work out regularly, no health problems - it was just a fluke what I did this week.

 

I agree, there is never anything such as being okay just because you are "young and healthy"!!

 

I am only 32. When I was 28, I was going to school, working full time, and beyond taking buses everywhere and walking, I was walking 3+ miles a day for exercise. Shortly after my 29th birthday, I was placed in the hospital and had to have emergency brain surgery to save my eyesight.

 

Fast forward to this year, again perfectly healthy (minus some of my eyesight that is). About 5 weeks before our December cruise I was in the hospital not able to walk. Herniated Disc in my lower back that I didn't want to do anything but lay down, not move and cry! They even tried to push me to have surgery to fix it, w/o having insurance. You know things are bad when a hospital/dr is saying "We know you can't pay the $50,000 hospital bill, but you REALLY need this done!"

 

All of these going from being a perfectly healthy young person to being in the hospital in less than 1 week each time. If any of these happened while scheduled for a cruise, it would have been really bad w/o insurance.

 

Being young makes it easier. I got pre-existing condition coverage, tailored more to someone driving to port instead of flying, with 100% coverage for medical reasons, and 125% trip interruption for less than $150 for a family of 4. This is for my upcoming NCL Suite Life cruise.

 

If you are worried about the price cutting into "other" things on your cruise. Break it down more. Our scheduled cruise is 11 days. Guess what, I can easily go with one less drink each of those days. Most people working an extra shift at work, or not eating dinner out for a month will cover the cost of basic insurance!!

[sturderick]

Ok, I have a question. We have Carnival insurance selected but haven't made our final payment yet. We are planning on paying off our July cruise in early May and then switching to private insurance after we do that. We don't want to go without insurance but want to pay off the cruise before we switch. Is it more expensive the closer the cruise gets? Can we get private insurance closer to the cruise date? We've never done this before because we've always gone through Carnival.

[silverfoxcruiser]

On our very first cruise, Costa Riviera, in 1986, we also considered ourselves young and healthy. I was 42, DH 47, and we were active and had no health problems. We left from Fort Lauderdale, and on a very rainy, windy, tossing and turning turbulent oceanic night, we had to divert to San Juan for a medical emergency. For some unknown, (or forgotten), reason, a very ill passenger was taken off by a tender boat. We watched him, on a stretcher, and his wife carrying what we thought to be a purse, be loaded onto a bouncing, unstable, very small boat. We learned the next day that he was 37 years old, and, unfortunately, had died before reaching the shores of SJU. I worked for one of the legacy airlines and was aware of how expensive transporting his remains would be for his family. We've been on 5 more cruises, and have never traveled without additional insurance. Silver

[carolmacey]

To buy or not to buy travel insurance - that is the question. Wondering how many people purchase it and how many don't. I know it's a great thing to have but am thinking I could use the extra money for something else.

 

Buy! Buy! Buy!

[mitsguy2001]

One other thing to warn people about: most (if not all) health insurance in the US (at least employer based health insurance) has specific networks that doctors can belong to or not belong to. Even if your health insurance has out of network coverage, it only covers the "usual and customary" charges. "Balance billing" is legal for an out of network provider, where they charge you the balance of their fee, above and beyond the "usual and customary" charges that the insurance covers.

 

Even if your insurance supposedly covers you outside the US or on a cruise ship, it is almost certainly out of network coverage. If an out of network doctor decides to charge you for $50,000, and your insurance company decides that $500 is the usual and customary charge, then that doctor can legally charge you for $49,500, and, unfortunately, you don't have any recourse. Another good reason to have travel insurance.

[Yvonne]

We always buy it, through insuremytrip.com

 

Four years ago the day we were to be flying down to Florida (our cruise was leaving two days later) was the day of my Father's funeral.

 

We postponed the trip by one day, but had to pay $312 for the airline change and price difference in flights.

 

We turned the claim in when we got home and two weeks later we had a check for $312.

 

You just never know what is going to happen. If my Dad would have passed away while we were on our trip we would have had to fly home immediately so the cost would have been even more.

 

And we're getting older, and more health issues, so for us it's just part of the vacation cost to add trip insurance.

[klmorg]

I would suggest the OP do a Search on here for travel insurance stories. I could do a commercial for it! We have first-hand experience of the benefits of it when my seemingly healthy & younger (47) DH had a heart attack on board, debark in Grand Cayman, air ambulance to Miami & a myriad of related trip interruption & medical expenses, all fully reimbursed/covered by insurance. $41PP investment at the time, total expenses around $115,000.

[nbsjcruiser]

To buy or not to buy travel insurance - that is the question. Wondering how many people purchase it and how many don't. I know it's a great thing to have but am thinking I could use the extra money for something else.

 

You have to have at least medical coverage when you're away. I don't care how young or fit you are, bad things happen to everyone. I'm a young guy but got injured on a trip a couple years ago. Before I could blink I had spent over 2K in services on the ship, ambulance rides to hospital and so on. Had I needed surgery the costs would have been astronomical for me. Thankfully I had insurance.

 

There's been horror stories on cruise critic about people who rolled the dice and lost. If you are independently wealthy and can self insure yourself then go for it. If not, you better protect yourself.

[nbsjcruiser]

We vary rarely do. Our medical insurance and amex perks cover us for medical/evac out of the country. As for the cruise itself, we are young and have no kids so the chance that we would have to cancel is slim, and if so, whatever loss we would take we could absorb pretty easily.

 

You'll find many varying and strong opinions on this subject.

 

Then you do have medical coverage - there's no need for you to buy it. We're the same way. We have insurance covered through our Mastercard as well as additional coverage with my employer.

[Rottweiler Puppy]

Ok, I have a question. We have Carnival insurance selected but haven't made our final payment yet. We are planning on paying off our July cruise in early May and then switching to private insurance after we do that. We don't want to go without insurance but want to pay off the cruise before we switch. Is it more expensive the closer the cruise gets? Can we get private insurance closer to the cruise date? We've never done this before because we've always gone through Carnival.

 

I think the Carnival one covers cancellation. Might want to double check.

 

If you cancel that insurance and by a third party insurance you will probably lose the trip cancellation part because most require you to purchase from them within 15 days of booking your cruise. If you already got the insurance from Carnival and the cancellation coverage is important, I would probably keep it at this point.

 

 

If trip cancellation is not an issue then you can most certainly drop Carnivals and buy your own coverage for medical, luggage and interruption.

[Mumsykat]

We always get the insurance! For starters, DH's mother is 91 years old and he would go right up a wall if we didn't have the insurance to fall back on in case something happened. Definitely worth it not to have him fussing and worrying.

[cruzegurl104]

When we took our first cruise we didnt have it. It was our honeymoon, and we didnt think about it. I dont think we knew about it either. My husband was in the Marine Corps & felt pretty indestructable at that time.:rolleyes: we buy it now tho! I bought ours from insure my trip (dot) com. It was only $49.00 & it seems to be a pretty sweet deal. Worse case scenario if we have to be medically evacuated, they cover up to $500,000. Accident & sickness medical expense coverage of $100,000 as well. I feel pretty protected. $49.00 was a small price to pay should anything crazy & unforeseen arise.

 

Happy Cruising!

[happy cruzin]

We vary rarely do. Our medical insurance and amex perks cover us for medical/evac out of the country. As for the cruise itself, we are young and have no kids so the chance that we would have to cancel is slim, and if so, whatever loss we would take we could absorb pretty easily.

 

You'll find many varying and strong opinions on this subject.

 

True! No need for insurance IF the potential loss will not be a burden.

 

OP - we've done it both ways.

[maggieworkman]

If you read Cruise Critic long enough, you will read many stories about missed ships, father/mother/grandma/etc. died and we can't go, medical emergencies, etc.

 

I think we need a thread that just has links to all these various stories in one place.

 

After reading all of those, you can make your own decision about whether it is worth the risk or not.

 

Maggie

[LMA5876]

Thank you all so much for the great advice. Have decided to purchase the insurance for piece of mind and the hopes that we don't need to use it. Will make for a much more relaxing cruise in the long run.

[Warm Breezes]

To buy or not to buy travel insurance - that is the question. Wondering how many people purchase it and how many don't. I know it's a great thing to have but am thinking I could use the extra money for something else.

 

We did not purchase it for our first 3 cruises. On our 2nd cruise we made an emergency landing in TN on a direct flight from MI to FL. We were on the ground for over 5 hours. Luckily we were flying in the day before so we it was just a late night and not a missed cruise. On our 3rd cruise we drove from MI to FL with extended family in 2 vehicles. In GA, DM discovered their trunk wouldn't open...with DSF's wheelchair and all their luggage inside. We had to find a VW dealership in GA to help us get it fixed and spend 4 unscheduled hours there. Again, we had planned on arriving in FL a couple days early to visit DGM. On that same trip as we were driving from DGM's to the Tampa Port, a cooler flew out of the back of a truck in front of us, over our mini-van, and smashing into the front window on the drivers side of DM's car. Luckily no one was hurt and we were only 5-10 minutes from the port so DH took over driving her car to the Port. The Parking Lot attendants helped her arrange someone to come to the Parking Lot while we were on our cruise to fix it. When we returned home from that same cruise we found out the DGM ended up going into the hospital the day before and DF (who was already in the hospital when we left, but getting better) caught an infection in the hospital while we were gone and was now getting worse. He passed away 3 days after our return.

 

We had so many near misses that I looked into getting insurance for our next cruise. We found that we could get what we needed for less than $100 for the 4 of us total from insure my trip . com. Wisely, we started purchasing it for our all of our following cruises. Guess what? We ended up needing it for our 7th planned cruise. The plan was to drive from MI to NY and sail on the Glory. We drove in the day before and I got the call that DGM passed away just after we had checked into our hotel. Since all of us were extremely close to DGM and we had the insurance, we decided to cancel and head home the next day instead of getting on the ship. For my children's sake, I'm glad we did. We were fully reimbursed for our cruise and took the same planned cruise the following year without the grieving we would have had to deal with if we had went ahead and gone the year before.

[mitsguy2001]

The other reason why insurance is a good idea is because, both psychologically and practically, it's better to pay extra for a cruise that you do get to go on, then to pay for a cruise that you don't want to go on. Keep in mind that in most cases that require you to cancel a cruise, you suffered some sort of hardship (such as either a death in the family, a job loss, an illness or injury to yourself, or an illness or injury to someone close to you). In any of those cases, where you are already dealing with a difficult situation, being forced to pay for a cruise that you were looking forward to but now won't get to go on (and might never get to go on in the future) just pours salt on the wound. Also, keep in mind that if you book a cruise, you most likely can afford it, at least assuming the best case scenario. But any of ths scenarios that I mentioned (death in the family, job loss, illness or injury to yourself, illness or injury to someone close to you) will cost you more money, making the cruise (which you now won't be able to go on) more difficult to afford. On other hand, I'm willing to pay a little extra (cost of the insurance) for a cruise that I will never forget!

[hill6]

Had to use cruise insurance last November when our trip to Hawaii was postponed due to DH be in the hospital 5 days for a gallbladder attack/surgery. Got all money back except price of the insurance.

[Eeyoregon]

IMHO? BUY IT! If you can afford to cruise/travel then why wouldn't you spend the extra $50 to insure that investment?

 

Like others have said, you just NEVER EVER EVER know what COULD happen to you or your sailing companion(s).

 

I consider myself a healthy 41 year old. With that being said, I have had TWO, out of the blue, emergency life saving surgeries in the past 4 years. If either had happened while on the ship, med-evac would have been my only option for survival. I know darn well that my personal insurance isn't going to easily hand over thousands and thousands of dollars for a med-evac flight. With my $40 travel insurance policy, I get $500,000 in coverage for medical evacuation.

 

Or, had I been booked on a cruise within 6 weeks of either of my surgeries, I would have had to cancel, which would have been within the non-refundable penalty period but my insurance would have covered any non-refundable items such as airline tickets, pre-paid hotels and money paid to the cruise line.

 

I just factor the cost into the price of the trip, buy the insurance and don't look back. My piece of mind is worth the $40 or $50.

 

Happy sailing.

 

P.S. I always purchase thru insuremytrip.com. They have excellent customer service.

[rfkeith10]

Airlift from Guatemala for a broken hip last April around $36 K - PAID FOR BY INSURANCE that cost us $457. We always bought insurance, and like everyone else, thought we would never have to use it. Thank goodness we are paranoid. LOL

 

 

Elaine: Teresia and I were on the Canal cruise when Richard had his accident. If you read this post would you please email me at rfkeith10@hotmail.com I would appreciate it......

 

Thanks,

 

Ray

[LHP]

I always recommend that people buy it.....

 

BECAUSE those who think it is to much money are usually the folks that can not afford to lose the money on a cruise IF something should happen.

 

As with anything in life...

 

IF you can not afford to lose it, insure it or don't buy it!

 

 

This is especially good advice to all those "tourists" who complain about how heartless Carnival is because people did not buy insurance, something happened and now they are mad at Carnival .....

 

because Carnival won't refund their money.....

 

 

I always ask them....if you own a Mustang and you wreck it, do you expect Ford Motor Company to repair (or replace it) for free....

 

of course not!

[asalligo]

I always buy it. A few years back my wifes father died the day we were to board a plane to go on vacation. Airline absolutely would not refund a dime and resort would only agree to a future credit. Out thousands to go to a funeral.

[asalligo]

I always recommend that people buy it.....

 

BECAUSE those who think it is to much money are usually the folks that can not afford to lose the money on a cruise IF something should happen.

 

As with anything in life...

 

IF you can not afford to lose it, insure it or don't buy it!

 

 

This is especially good advice to all those "tourists" who complain about how heartless Carnival is because people did not buy insurance, something happened and now they are mad at Carnival .....

 

because Carnival won't refund their money.....

 

 

I always ask them....if you own a Mustang and you wreck it, do you expect Ford Motor Company to repair (or replace it) for free....

 

of course not!

 

I have a differing opinion here, I expect Carnival to refund me in full if they can book another person in my cabin. If the boat is still sold out a week after I cancel, I expect a full refund.

[83tonio]

this is my 2nd time buying it. I will from now on