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Travel Insurance - The Smart Choice
Back in 2002, Daniel was working in Canada. We got to go visit him for two weeks and we had a blast! We weren't thinking that while we were there someone could get sick or hurt. That was the last thing on our minds!
We went to visit a nature center with the wife and children of one of Daniel's co-workers. It was all going well until I heard a blood curdling scream that sounded a lot like my son! Jack was 5 at the time. He and another kid had been looking at one of those wheel exhibits. You know the kind where there is a window in a wheel and as you turn it the window passes over different pictures? Well, Jack's hand was stuck in that window/opening! Jack had pointed to the picture, the other kid was turning...and OUCH! When Jack pulled out his hand, it was red and 'crunched' looking.
It turns out that there was no plastic over that opening to keep just that sort of thing from happening and further more the bearing in the wheel was broken ( a repairman had been called) and it was allowing the wheel to be out further from the wall than it should have been (thereby allowing the insertion of the hand). They were kind and supplied us with ice. As I heard their apologies about the accident, I found myself explaining we were from out of country and would they be covering the cost of our impending E.R. trip? They looked at me as if I had lost my mind and said no! To them it was the same as if Jack had smashed his finger in the door. HMPH! Faulty exhibit is not the same as having your finger smashed in the door!
Anyway, it was not the time or place to get into an argument about the situation. The other mom escorted us to a local hospital. I am sweating bullets as to whether they are going to want money then and there, how much it is going to be, are my sons fingers broken, and will they even see him... I have to tell you it was one of the best hospital experiences we have ever had. We were in and out in a couple of hours. They said they would try to bill our insurance (we had blue cross at the time) and if that didn't work, they would send us a bill at home. Jack's fingers weren't broken. They wrapped his little hand up and we took him back to the apartment. We were lucky. The bill wasn't too bad because the incident ended up not resulting in a major injury, but what if it had? Blue Cross didn't pay any of the bill. We could have been stuck in a world of hurt.
After that accident, we decided that should we travel to Canada again (or anywhere else out of country for that matter) that we would purchase Travel Insurance. Travel Insurance can protect you from accidents, injuries and illness for just a few dollars a day. I just ran our family through the options at Kanetix, just to see how much it would cost for us to get insurance if we visited Canada for 10 days. To cover the whole family, the cost ranged from 45.00 to 100.00 depending on how much coverage we wanted (10,000 -150,000). This money would be money well spent as far as I am concerned. We may never have a situation like that arise again, but if it does, I want to be focused on getting medical attention, not on how the bill will get paid!
