What Isn’t Covered by Health Insurance?

In our last post we dug into the meat and potatoes of health insurance for travellers. Needless to say, the key message was this: don’t take unnecessary risks. It’s important to protect yourself, which means it’s important to know exactly what your insurance covers and what isn’t covered by health insurance.

Because travel insurance does not cover everything.

It has exclusions, conditions, and limitations.

Like we talked about last month, most policies do not cover pre-existing conditions. The definition varies from policy to policy. Other common exclusion is accidents or illness caused by abuse of drugs or alcohol.

Also not covered:

• routine healthcare
• elective or cosmetic surgery
• follow-up non-emergency care that could be done in your home-country or province

Many plans limit benefits if the insured fails to get advance approval for treatment. Some policies don’t cover risky sports like bungee jumping, rock climbing, scuba diving, or hang gliding. Self-inflicted injuries are not covered, nor are injuries caused while a policy-holder is committing a criminal act.

Travel Insurance for Pregnant Women

There’s a lot of pros and cons of travelling while pregnant. Relaxing in a beautiful place is chief among the pros, the normal and not-normal complications that arise during pregnancy being the most important of the cons.

And what if you go into pre-term labour in another country? Even if mother is covered, the newborn baby typically is not. Imagine being in a foreign country or just over the border in Bellingham to shop and your new child decides it’s time to come into the world. And then an expensive scramble typically ensues to get mom and baby back to Canada.

There’s a lot of details that go into travelling and getting the right insurance. Taking the risk and going without insurance ultimately falls back on you. Without insurance, your family might need to pay to get you back, and that’s probably not something you want to burden them with.

Most travel insurance providers will insure up to nine weeks before your due date, but beyond this it becomes more difficult. It’s very important to look at the insurance policy’s fine print to understand what is not covered.

You can buy travel health insurance at many Canadian banks or Canadian insurance companies. Credit card companies might offer health and travel insurance as well. Don’t assume that coverage is automatically included or that the card alone provides adequate coverage. Some companies charge an additional premium for travel coverage. Others require that you pay for your travel arrangements using that card. Check with your credit card company before you go.

Read more about insurance for expecting moms here.

The typical traveller is young, brash, or just forgets, but really, the non-typical traveller is just as susceptible. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Travel insurance means you might pay two dollars per day spent a hospital instead of $2,000.

Take the proper measures and protect yourself. An insurance agent can take care of the details pertaining to your trip, but it’s crucial to take that first step so the trip of a lifetime doesn’t turn into a nightmare.

Categorised in: insurance

This post was written by Marco Faccone