Right. 36+ years ago I worked for a corporation that included within it a division that handled travel medical insurance services. The clients were companies that had products for leisure and business travelers, expats, and cases like yours of employees abroad, to cover for immediate needs that arose where their regular health insurance would not provide, and perhaps more importantly, to cover for prompt return back to where their regular network could take them back in. Some of their big clients were Canadian supplementary-insurance companies (e.g. the various Blue Crosses, Citadel) who would sell a special cover to USA-bound “snowbirds” so if anything major arose the customer’s immediate care would be covered and they’d quickly be returned to be taken care of by the provincial health care.
In relative terms the cancellation and property policies are more expensive pound-for-pound than the medical policies because though a claim for the latter will be more costly, it will be very rare as opposed to cancellation and property loss.
Without a doubt. There is a similar thing for concert tickets. Good luck getting reimbursed without a bunch of pushback and it being a giant production.
Just came in to point out the obvious that there are really cheap options from shady companies. When I was shopping for a company I read a bunch of horror stories of getting coverage denied.
I travel internationally a fair amount, and always get trip insurance that includes trip cancellation as well as coverage for medical expenses. I also always get coverage for medical evacuation and/or medical repatriation. The latter is especially important if you are on a cruise and need to be evacuated, or injured or sick in a remote destination with limited medical facilities.
These policies are age-dependent, but cost something in the range of $200-$250 for a trip that costs $4,000 to $4,500. (They typically are about 5% of the cost of the trip.) That includes trip cancellation (for covered reasons only, not cancel for any reason), and something in the range of $250K-$500K of medical coverage, along with $500K to $1 million in medical evacuation coverage.
But you can also get policies that only include medical coverage and medical evacuation/repatriation. These policies are typically priced on a per-day basis, but work out to about one-third of the cost of the aforementioned policies. They do not include trip cancellation, and typically have lower medical coverage expenses: such as only covering $50K of medical expenses (although they do include as much as $1 million in medical evacuation coverage).
So I generally get the full coverage. The company I’ve always used is Travel Insured International.
Incidentally, I have made claims with them in the past, and they do pay out for valid claims. With that said—and I think this is true for all insurance companies—if you make a claim, you need to be ready to prove everything, with receipts.
I have travel health insurance from a German insurer (a subsidiary of the ADAC motorist club), so I cannot make any recommendations for you. ADAC has ambulance aircraft of their own for repatriation to Germany, but for ambulatory and noncritical patients the more usual method would be accompanied airline transport. My policy is yearly and covers trips of up to 63 days per trip.
It should be noted that some countries require tourists having travel health insurance as a condition of getting a visa (that was the case with me for Russia, 2014) or a condition or entry (that was the case with me for Georgia (the one in the Caucasus) this year).
If your travel includes a cruise you should look if your travel health insurance policy covers onboard treatment. I read a German magazine article recently that cruise ship doctors bill at extortionate rates (by German standards, anyway) and to be sure your travel health insurance covers cruise ship doctors.