Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Kuwait City, Kuwait on March 31st.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

It's all just gambling

Insurance of any kind is simply gambling. You pay the premium (place your bet) that something bad will happen to you and your insurance will pay for it so you can collect your winnings.

The difference is of course that you really don't want to win!

And as with any gambling, it's highly likely that you won't win. The odds are that your bet will not pay off.

Of course it's no different with travel medical insurance. 

I've researched all the available policies as much as I'm willing to. It's very time consuming.

And I've decided on the Seven Corners Liaison Travel Plus plan. It's one of the few that includes Covid coverage, this one to a maximum of $100,000 USD.

One of the things I like about this plan is that it gives you lots of options to tailor the plan to your own specific comfort level. For us, I chose the $1M maximum coverage, with a $5,000 deductible. We chose the worldwide coverage excluding USA.

For this, the premium for the two of us is $2,486 USD per year. 

Surprisingly, when I went to pay for it there is no option to pay monthly. In doing further research, if you want to pay monthly then you just sign up for a 30 day (or 60 day or 90 day... whatever you choose) plan. And as the end date draws near, you apply for an extension for another 30 (or 60 or 90) days and place another bet. You can continue extending for up to three years.

If anything relatively small happens then we will pay for it out of pocket. We are not the type to run to the doctor for any little thing, and we believe that insurance should be there to prevent financial disaster. If we have to pay the first $5,000 of any treatment, it won't bankrupt us.

This is not a general health insurance plan, it is a travel medical plan. In other words, it doesn't pay for checkups or physicals or any type of proactive treatments. 

On another matter... I bought some two part epoxy, and I glued my glasses back together. I actually didn't think it was going to work because there isn't much structure left in that corner, and the frame itself was actually missing around the lens for about 1/8". But I taped a tiny form to hold the excess epoxy in that area, and I did the job before going to bed last night because the epoxy required an 8 hour minimum dry time. It seems to have works well, although I will do some reinforcing of that area with a second coat tonight. Fingers crossed!

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6 comments:

  1. My wife and I are thinking of going to Germany next April so I am very interested in your search for insurance coverage. Do you know if this policy covers you while Canada has its "avoid non-essential travel outside Canada" advisory in place? What does Section 8(gg) of the plan document refer to?

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    1. The current travel advisory does not meet the requirements of section 8 (gg) as it is an advisory, not an order. The section excludes coverage if you refuse to leave after your government or the local government orders you to leave. In this case you are advised against traveling but there is not an order in place. An example of a situation that this would apply to would be similar to when the US State Department ordered non-emergency US travelers to evacuate from Iraq in 5/15/2019. In that case had someone stayed without good reason they would have voided the coverage.

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    2. Thank you for looking into this. This is the first policy the seems to meet our needs. And your explanation of insurance as gambling is bang-on!

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    3. It is also about the only one that we found that met our needs as well. They sure don't like to make it easy to understand though!

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  2. Epoxy. The miracle cure. It pretty much held our RV together.

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