Travel Insurance

[60south]

Hey all,

I'm taking a little trip up to God's Pocket (yay!) a week from now, and looking at travel insurance. The trip is a bit expensive, of course, but I'm only interested in coverage for big catastrophic medical expenses like road accidents or being bitten by an orca. If the trip gets cancelled due to weather or covid or meteor strike, I can live with that and just eat the expense.

Sooo... Getting quotes, it turns out that the majority of the cost of travel insurance appears to be for things like trip cancellation coverage, which I don't care about. With that in mind, I put in a total trip cost of $1 and the prices came waaaay down. Like, DAN travel insurance for the week is something like $30-40, and AIG was ... drum roll please ... $6. For a week. Full medical coverage up to some large dollar amount, medevac, missed connection, etc.

Okay, uh, Whaaaat? Can I do that? Is there some weird clause that says you most declare the full cost of your trip? I haven't been able to find anything that explicitly requires that. And how would they know or why would they care if I want to under-insure the trip? What if I wasn't staying at a resort, just camping, and the trip cost really was just a few bucks?

What am I missing here? I'll probably just go for it regardless because why not.

glenn

[ScubaJess]

Hi Glenn,

Not sure but $6 sounds great! Have a fantastic trip and safe travels!!! Take lots of pics!!!

PS
Death by orca would make a cool obituary, but please don't do it lol

[Boarderguy]

Pretty sure that DAN covers all the extra medivac costs and a host of additional things with their basic or enhanced membership. You get a chamber ride and a few more goodies if you elect to get their basic insurance. All in you're looking at about $80 for a year of insurance for all dive related and other problems that may arise. I have a DAN family membership with me being the only dive insured one for the time being. That was $100 for 4 people including my insurance.

[Jeff Pack]

I thought I'd used DAN, but theres fine print about depth limitations, not a concern for your diving, but I'd went elsewhere.

But for your diving should be fine. WE used H2O insurance for our gear

[Redleg0811]

I was going to get DAN as I always thought it was a good idea. They didn't have the enhanced when I was a member long ago, or I didn't know about it. I was going to do family enhanced.

Is there other insurance that it makes sense to get for a trip out of country?

Thanks
Martin

[orcasc205]

My results are non-typical, but I bought DAN trip insurance for the first time for our trip to Cozumel in April. As many here know, my wife and I were in a severe auto accident while on that trip and the insurance was well worth it. For example, when I had to have an air ambulance from the ICU in Cozumel to the trauma center at HarborView here in Seattle, the insurance covered the $53K airfare (most expensive flight I'll never remember.) The travel insurance also covered all of our health care needs while in Mexico without having to fight or get clearance from our U.S. insurance provider first.

We got lucky that I had purchased the travel insurance for that trip -- I don't want to contemplate what would have happened to us financially if I had not.

[Redleg0811]

Besides the $100 for family, Do you need to purchase a separate trip insurance from Dan? Or are you just saying that right before that trip you got the enhanced insurance from them? Just trying to make sure that I'm not missing anything on their website.

I read about your accent just the other day. Sounds like you're on the mend? I'm assuming physical therapy and so forth? Hopefully it's going well?

Best Regards
Martin

[orcasc205]

We purchased the separate trip insurance from DAN that included things like lost luggage, trip interruption, cancelled flights, etc. We also have the DAN family membership, but I'm not sure which of our expenses would have been covered under that without the additional trip insurance. One thing to remember is our injuries had nothing to do with diving (we hadn't even had a chance to do our first dive in Cozumel yet), so the trip insurance was more applicable.

I am still on the mend. Just had what will hopefully be my last surgery from the accident on Monday and am recovering from that now. My goal is to be diving again before the end of the year -- my surgeons are supporting the goal, but I plan to get a full dive physical from a dive physician first. Physical therapy is on hold for few weeks due to the surgery, but I'll be back at it soon.

[Redleg0811]

My thoughts are with you. Hope to dive with you sometime.

[orcasc205]

My thoughts are with you. Hope to dive with you sometime.

Thanks! I look forward to diving together in the future too. I have to say, the Seattle dive community has been a huge support through this whole ordeal.