Travel Insurance is one of those things you seriously do not want to by-pass, skim through or be a tight arse about. You might travel overseas and nothing will happen but do you really want to take that chance? I sure did not.
If I am brutally honest, I never really took travel insurance, too seriously before I had ITP. I usually just asked for others opinions and just booked whatever someone recommended. However, since my newfound condition I have started to realize that I cannot take my health for granted.
ITP is a difficult condition to live with in a sense that you never quite know when your platelets are going to go south. You cannot predict it and you may not even be aware of it until it is too late.
Does this mean that you should live your life in fear and never travel? No, it does not! It does however mean that precautions need to be made in order to be able to travel safely.
Now whilst I had put my best foot forward in regards to ensuring that I would be travelling safe overseas unfortunately I have had a minor unfortunate situation where my IVIG treatment did not go as planned (to read more about this click here). This situation however does not stop me from being able to share the research I have done in regards to travel insurance. Even though I had to cancel my trip, I had already evaluated and purchased my travel insurance. Therefore, here is the low down.
If you have ITP (Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura), it is imperative that you inform the travel insurance company. I would also recommend you choose a travel insurer that covers your autoimmune ITP condition. Yes, not all insurers cover ITP and sure it is much cheaper to get travel insurance without declaring your medical condition. However cheaper is not always better – you get what you pay for and that means you will not be covered if your ITP plays up and you need medical assistance when you are overseas.
I started with eight travel insurance companies going through one by one eliminating one at a time. From the eight I ended up with four that would/could cover my ITP pre-existing medical condition. Just so, you are mentally prepared once I entered my pre-existing medical condition of ITP my travel insurance doubled if not more.
A couple of questions they asked are:
What is you condition?
“Autoimmune ITP”
Are you currently seeing a doctor more than once every six months for this condition?
“Yes”
How many unplanned hospital admissions have you had for this condition in the last 12 months?
“One”
Obviously you need to answer these questions as honestly as possible as the travel insurance company will investigate if you need to make a claim. If you are not honest you risk your claim not being approved.
From here I ended up putting all four travel insurance companies into an excel spreadsheet so I could compare what they offered. For me my main focus in regards to travel insurance was my health. If my luggage gets lost, it gets lost. I was not renting any cars so I did not care about car rental insurance. Travel delay – I still wanted this however my focus was overseas medical and hospital expenses. I wanted to make sure that if in the unlucky chance that something was to happen to me whilst overseas my family or I will not be stung with a huge medical bill. Now whilst all the other things are lovely, to me they were just luxuries not necessities.
The four Travel insurers I ended up with were Medibank, Covermore, Cover 1 and World 2 cover.
Medibank - I crossed off medibank as it was the most expensive but did not seem to offer anything better than the other travel insurers.
Covermore – Even though covermore were the cheapest I was put off by their customer reviews
World 2 Cover – This seemed like a good deal however after reading their negative reviews I decided to go with a different travel insurance company
Cover 1 – Cover 1 from my perspective had the best cover along with better reviews from customers whom actually had to make a claim.
So how much did travel insurance cost me? Well it went from $85.91 (no pre-existing medical condition) to $315.44 (pre-existing medical condition). Yep that is over a 250% increase!
Unfortunately I was unable to travel therefore never used this travel insurance however for those of you looking to travel with ITP – please be sure to do your research on Travel Insurance and make sure you declare your condition no matter the extra expense.