Last Updated on November 8, 2017
Many people who travel have never even heard of travel insurance. It’s a common thing for people to avoid insurance they feel they might be able to do without. Plenty of us have decided not to get the insurance for a rental car because we’re pretty sure we won’t get in a wreck. But this means that we’ll carry a bit of worry for the entire time we drive the car, hoping that no harm will come to the vehicle. Maybe you’ve even been in a collision in a rental car, and have had to pay the associated fees because of lack of insurance.
Travel insurance is much the same in certain ways, but it deals more with your own health and wellbeing. It can be a difficult thing to be and stay healthy while traveling. Depending on where you are traveling, you may be exposed to infectious agents that your body isn’t used to, causing you to develop an illness that needs local medical care. In other cases, you may simply be injured in some sort of accident.
Travel insurance for health and medical expenses is the most common function served by this insurance form. You may already have it available through an active credit account, so review if you need extra travel insurance, or if you are covered by the one in your credit card. Your travel insurance should be directly tailored to the nation in which you will be traveling, as some countries like the United States have much higher medical costs than many other nations.
Getting sick while traveling is the worst – but it does happen!
But travel insurance isn’t all about health. It has many other practical applications, some of which will be available across all policies, but others which you will need to shop around for.
One of the most important is trip cancellation, delay, or significant time change. Having your travel plans forcibly altered may cause big problems back home, including but not limited to: health complications, being quarantined for possible illness, missing jury duty and other legal obligations, losing your job, failing to fulfill military duties, or being unable to go to an ill loved one or family member.
Travel insurance may also cover the return of a body if a covered individual passes away overseas. Travel insurance may cover the return of a minor to the country of origin. It can pay for your new travel plans if your trip is delayed or cancelled. It may cover lost, stolen, or delayed baggage. It can even uncover such unusual and unfortunate events as hijacking.
As you can see, travel insurance has many more applications than most people appreciate. Even though your overseas travel probably goes smoothly more often than not, repeated travel will show how something will eventually always go wrong while you are traveling out of the country. If you are a regular traveler, you can depend on the fact that you will eventually be in a situation where travel insurance would come in handy. Even if you have to use it only once, the cost of travel insurance may be more than paid for in the savings you get from not having to cover the problem yourself.
