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What travel insurance really means

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Re: What travel insurance really means

#161

Post by latchkey »

yks wrote: post #67
latchkey wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I guess a lot of people think it will be fun to ride a motorbike in Bali." -- I am from California, but I live in Vietnam now for nearly two years. Riding a motorbike here is almost a necessary part of the culture. I've also been to Bali, which has a similar, but not as extreme culture. Unless you have prior expert experience on two wheels (I raced bicycles for 8 years and have ridden motorcycles on all terrains, fo…

I’ve been motorcycling both in SE Asia and the US, always feel much safer in Asia because the speeds are low, bikes are low-powered and abundant so the drivers expect them. And majority of expats get by fine without motorcycle racing experience, the biggest issue is as always driving while drunk.

I kind of feel safer in Asia, not because of the speeds, but because the way that traffic works. It is a system of avoidance, kind of like how a school of fish works. You are expected to avoid the people around you. If everyone avoids everyone else, then nobody gets into an accident. There is also very little road rage here. Showing signs of anger is considered culturally inappropriate.

In the US, you are literally a target. Road rage is a thing. Someone turning left or right on you happens all the time. In Vietnam, cars turn really slowly and usually in a predictable manner.

Now, the issue is that when things go wrong, they go really wrong. Vietnam has one of the highest rates of road deaths in the world [1] [2]. I think these numbers are actually low, because not all deaths even get reported. Also, not everyone dies... non-fatal accidents happen constantly here.

The other issue is that this is a relatively young country for people behind the wheel of a car. Cars have only been widely accessible here for the last ~10 years and it is growing. The level of skill for drivers is extremely low, the education testing is a joke. There is constantly videos of people driving their car/bus/truck through a group of people, house or off the road because they mistake the gas for the brake. Or even worse... side effect accidents... [3]

[1] https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/traffic-accidents-kill-ove...

[2] https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20180220/179-killed-in-t...

[3] https://www.facebook.com/vieclamtaixelaixe/videos/1972940609...

Re: What travel insurance really means

#162

Post by rsbadger »

trocadero wrote: post #121
rsbadger wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always replied to them immediately, it's just I didn't get the written "not fit to fly" until I saw the DRs again, which was the day of the surgery. I had told the insurers that the DR's had already "told" me I wasn't, and that I would get the written form when I next met them. I had to decide between having the surgery or not at that point. I couldn't go back on Monday morning, ask the Dr for his letter, and hold…

Did you do this? >The patient may want to forward onto the treating doctor to help point out to us where in the manual the reason why he is not fit to fly as our decision would still be curtailment and he would have been fit to fly. http://www.iata.org/publications/Pages/medical-manual.aspx

No I didn't, that email was 7 days after the surgery, I had already left Singapore and was back in Bali by then. (My "not fit to fly" letter stated I was not fit 'before' having the surgery, once the plate was in and the swelling had resided I was OK)

Re: What travel insurance really means

#163

Post by rsbadger »

trocadero wrote: post #160
armitron wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard medical advice? Are you even reading what he wrote? His doctor did not clear him to fly. It's crystal clear from the way they conducted themselves that the insurance company would find any excuse to deny his claim. It's also very probable that their delays were deliberate. I hope OP can talk to an attorney and take them to the cleaners. At the very least, he named them so potential future victims will have s…

>Standard medical advice? Are you even reading what he wrote? His doctor did not clear him to fly. That's not how insurance works. They aren't going to pay for stuff on the say so of one doctor. The expectation is that they pay for treatment according to published and accepted standards of care. In this case, those say that you can fly with broken bones. >With all the responses you've generated here and the way you g…

Just to clarify your comment on "What they offered was exactly what travel insurance is there for." They didn't offer me anything. Not one piece of my cover was offered. They 'offered' me a flight home as a goodwill gesture. They stressed that they didn't have to. It was a really shitty tactic. If you complain to a company and accept "their goodwill gesture" you are agreeing that no further action will be taken. If I had accepted their flight home, that would have been my insurance void and I would have no grounds to appeal.

Re: What travel insurance really means

#164

Post by J-dawg »

luispedrocoelho wrote: post #131
J-dawg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why I said in another post you absolutely have to read and understand your policy before you experience a loss!! Yep, and this post has been an education for me! However, I still have issues with the way it's marketed. I think part of the problem is showing these huge numbers for medical cover. It's almost a psychological trick, in the same way that lottery players see an enormous jackpot and somehow confla…

> In reality, most claimants are going to spend much less than 1% of that £5 million limit before they get flown home. It only really applies to people who are at death's door and end up with a long stay in intensive care, or need a fully-staffed medical flight to get them home. Exactly, but you're saying it like it's a bad thing instead of "this is just what travel insurance is and why it's so cheap."

I’m saying it’s both of those things. I’m grateful to the author that I found out this way.

I still think it’s marketed in a deliberately misleading way.

Re: What travel insurance really means

#165

Post by sunstone »

There's no point in even buying travel insurance if your upfront assumption is that you're not likely to need it so you're going to buy on price.

On the other hand insurance is tricky at the best of times. (shill warning) In situations like this I put my trust in Costco because they have a track record of consistently providing a good deal the price.

I once knew a guy who ran a roofing business. He said that it was easy for him to insure his workers if they fell off the roof, but difficult to get coverage for when they hit the ground.

Re: What travel insurance really means

#166

Post by kioleanu »

What I was astonished to find out is that insurers actually have people or departments whose sole job is to find reasons not to pay and how they cling to absolutely every detail, true or not.

More or less the same thing happened to me with a 6 months travel insurance. I had an unfortunate series of light medical problems that racked up about 1500 EUR. I was somehow lucky that I over-informed the insurer anytime anything concerned them and they pre-approved each doctor's visit. When it was time to get my money back, they denied the claim saying that I flew back home one month into the trip (and then left again) and that legally concluded my trip. That was, of course, non sense.

I wrote them a letter saying that if they don't return my money in 30 days, I will fill in a complaint with the insurance oversight authority in my country. They didn't so I did. The nice part is that this authority shoots first and asks questions later so in a few days I got a really passive aggressive letter saying they will be paying in full, that they already decided that a week before so there was no need for me to file the complaint (I was, of course, not informed) and they asked me to withdraw my complaint.

Re: What travel insurance really means

#167

Post by rsbadger »

kioleanu wrote: post #166

What I was astonished to find out is that insurers actually have people or departments whose sole job is to find reasons not to pay and how they cling to absolutely every detail, true or not. More or less the same thing happened to me with a 6 months travel insurance. I had an unfortunate series of light medical problems that racked up about 1500 EUR. I was somehow lucky that I over-informed the insurer anytime anyth…

I'm assuming Insure and Go will be in touch at some point requesting me to take down my post as it's amassed 30k views in 24 hours. But I won't. Even if they don't pay out because of it, I'd prefer that people have access to this information. Paying me the $22k would be a drop in the ocean for them, but hopefully, the post will live on for years.

Re: What travel insurance really means

#168

Post by Flenser »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #153
trocadero wrote: post #37

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the insurance company here. Travel insurance is there to take care of emergency medical care. It's not for long term care. The guy clearly didn't want to travel because he preferred to be cared in Singapore. From his e-mail: >I intend to stay in Asia for some time yet. I did consider travelling home to have surgery in the UK, but the medical Service here is excellent and I'm already schedu…

I worked in insurance for a company with a reputation for being unusually ethical, etc. While working in insurance, I heard that it was quite common for other insurance companies to train their claims processors to look for a reason to deny, not a reason to pay. I was trained to look for a reason to pay, not a reason to deny and still sometimes found the bureaucratic process stomach-turning. I generally am sympatheti…

Do you think making insurance companies publish their payout:deny ratios would change their behaviour?

Re: What travel insurance really means

#169

Post by DoreenMichele »

Flenser wrote: post #168
DoreenMichele wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in insurance for a company with a reputation for being unusually ethical, etc. While working in insurance, I heard that it was quite common for other insurance companies to train their claims processors to look for a reason to deny, not a reason to pay. I was trained to look for a reason to pay, not a reason to deny and still sometimes found the bureaucratic process stomach-turning. I generally am sympatheti…

Do you think making insurance companies publish their payout:deny ratios would change their behaviour?

I have no idea, but I wouldn't count on it.

At the highly ethical, respectable company where I worked, this was going on:

Periodically, some actuarial would have a cow about how some benefit was costing too much. The policy would get sent to the legal department for review. Legal would find some defensible creative new interpretation for the language of the benefit in question. They would announce that we has been paying this benefit "wrong" the entire time the policy existed. They would retrain the entire claims department to "pay the benefit correctly."

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