TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Medical Evacuation Insurance

After hearing the story of injuried person on Anegada requiring Air Evacuation back to USA, I am wondering about purchasing annual plan as we(family) usually spend 6-8 weeks overseas per year. Anyone have advice on coverage? Plans?

We have On Call International.

Look at the DAN web site offering. They include medical advise and translation services.

DAN is divers assistance network.

We use MedJet. Thankfully, we've never had to use it!

Emergency Assistance Plus (American Airlines AAdvantage)

Check out Skymed on the sponsors page. They have annual plans also. They also fly you home, some only get you to the closes facility. If you decide on Skymed use our link and we get a small commission.

checkout insuremytrip.com a sponsor on this site. You can filter in medical evac. We never travel without it.

Working with American Express we have coverage that will get us to both medical care and home on any travel that was charged to the card. We do not buy air travel that was not charged to those cards with those evacuation benefits. You simply contact the number on the back of the card and a US MD and local MD are put in contact with you to determine the required medical care and transportation. This is the same type of benefit I have enjoyed with my fortune 100 employers during any business travel. That is just one of the many member services American Express is built around. You may remember the old saying. "American Express do not leave home without it". We follow those rules when it comes to travel away from home.

Stormjib - you might want to double check your coverage. I thought the same thing and decided to check a couple of weeks ago to discover it was no longer a service that AMEX provided. They provide medical assistance which means they will help you find a doctor while traveling and will help arrange medical evacuation but my Business Platinum card does not reimburse for those costs. They are all paid by the card holder. I now have an annual plan from MedJet.

Please let me know if you find out otherwise!

Looked on the AMEX site. Only seem to offer death benefits but no real medical evacuation coverage.

AMEX has many offers. They are not all created equal. You get what you pay for in most cases and in this case your credit score and background will come into play. Better credit can reflect risk and behavior habits. My family has no limits on evac costs and no activity limits nor a preexisting condition clause. Scuba Diving and Sky Diving are covered or at least not excluded.

The rub if there is any... the fine print says the travel must be charged to AMEX and your card must be current i.e. you are not behind paying your bills. If a child jumps in a college road trip car they may not be covered. If you use miles with no charges to the card you may not be covered. There is some history of AMEX covering trips as long as another card was not used for the travel. 90 days in the same place no longer becomes "travel" in my agreement. The BVI only lets me stay 30 days so no worry there.

Good to know I'm only being held back by my credit score and background. Can you add a link to the AMEX site that shows the coverage they offer?

I have to call bull on this:

"your credit score and background will come into play. Better credit can reflect risk and behavior habits"

As much as it pains me to agree with StormJib <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Wink.gif" alt="" />, Amex personal platinum does include as a standard travel benefit $100K medical transportation and $20K medical expenses for Latin America, Caribbean and Bermuda travel.

Will check these. Thanks

On Call International Website seems to say that planes no longer available

I've had DAN insurance for a few years and just submitted my first claim for an injury while snorkeling off Norman Island. It wasn't an evacuation, but rather it filled the role of secondary insurance after my primary finally covered their part of my surgery and other fun visits. The evacuation coverage is actually what brought me to DAN, and for the price it fit my needs . I'll throw out a new post later once I see how all the coverage is handled.

I'm seeing this on On Call's web site:

http://www.oncallinternational.com/app_m....pdf?v=06042013

They keep taking our annual premiums, too! We found them through Insure My Trip, but they didn't come up when I used their trip planner just now.

We have UN medical insurance, which is good around the world, so we needed medical evacuation that covered longer stays. At least up until now, On Call membership has been good for trips up to 60 days. We come back to the States for a couple weeks, which we like to do anyway.

You can call "Bull" but with AMEX and some other credit providers the better your credit background the better the offers. Particularly proactive offers. One difference between good credit and great credit with AMEX is the jump to unlimited evac and medicals while traveling subject to any other insurance you may have. Most of the fine print from AMEX notes they pay second to any other primary benefit you have.

Some members get no insurance benefits from AMEX, some get some very limited travel benefits, then some will cap out at $100K, and then others have unlimited benefits to get you home or replace your luggage if you charged the travel to The Card. If you picked your card based on points or rebates you likely get none of those benefits. If you are using Visa or MC for much of your travel AMEX will likely not invite you to the more flexible levels of membership.

AMEX was checking and data mining everything we do long before Google. AMEX was built to take care of their customers and does reward loyalty.

All interesting chatter.....

Does anyone have "first-hand knowledge" and actually gone through a claim process with any of these insurance companies?
And, specifically - with evac ?

Otherwise... kinda moot to be arguing which is best... no ?

Yes, there has been more than one, but this report will answer you question about how it works with Skymed anyway.

Skymed Evacuation from St. Martin

I have made two claims.

First time was in 2000 when my wife had to have emergency gall bladder surgery the night before our bareboat charter trip. We totally re-set the trip for a month later. They (AccessAmerica, if memory serves) covered the costs we would have had to eat.

About 10 years ago I came down with a norovirus the night before we were supposed to travel. We decided to put our departure back a day, because I was so sick I could not even stand up. The airline wanted to charge us $2,000 a ticket for the change, which was then covered by the insurance. I can't remember who we got for the insurance that time.

We always get insurance, we use CSA Trip Insurance. Haven't needed to claim med evac with it luckily, only one claim when I backed a jeep into a stick that blew out the back window.

However, this last trip I had good peace of mind having it because of the "state of emergency" on Tortola. If we needed to leave a day earlier we could not have.

I have to say, we always buy insurance when we travel. Living in St Thomas and seeing the number of visitors who come here yearly and fall/break a hip, have a stroke, have a car accident, etc. makes you be extra careful. Read the small print and make sure you will be taken where you want, not the closest available (from St Thomas, that is usually Puerto Rico). Also, make sure you have health insurance, because you need to have a facility and physician who are willing to accept you. From first hand observation only. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Wink.gif" alt="" />

My husband and I are trying to find the best plan for our needs. We have 3 upcoming trips between November, 2017 and April, 2018 to the BVI and St. John.

We believe we want/need only evacuation insurance in case of a medical emergency as we both have BlueCross/Blue Shield with out of network benefits.

We think we have narrowed it down to one of the following:

1. MedJet Assist for a 1 year plan at $395. (Allows us to evacuate to the hospital of our choice and is completely at our discretion. Repatriation included.)

2. GeoBlue Voyager Choice for 3 individual trips at $68.20/trip. ($500,000 for evacuation (as secondary) at the discretion of the attending docs and insurance. Repatriation included.)

We both work in healthcare and understand the risks of being able to choose our own hospitals and physicians. But, we know nothing about care in Puerto Rico. Is care there really that questionable? Anyone have any direct experience or know of experiences?

Such a tough decision to try and do the right thing.

Thanks in advance!

"But, we know nothing about care in Puerto Rico. Is care there really that questionable? Anyone have any direct experience or know of experiences?"

Well, regardless of what people say about the folks in Puerto Rico being bilingual, most of the service providers (not the docs) speak Spanish only. It's amazing that they will send reports of VI patients totally in Spanish. My med evac insurance takes me to Florida.

....thus speaks someone who is in the health care biz in St Thomas.. Just sayin'

That sums it up beautifully! We never considered the language barrier.

Thank you!