The waterfront where we are staying at Valle de Bravo, Mexico.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Valle de Bravo, Mexico.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Cancun on December 17th!

Sunday, July 3, 2022

A little frustrated with our travel medical insurance

We thought we had found the perfect solution to our travel medical insurance last year when we started with Heymondo. It was relatively inexpensive, and valid for anyone up to age 70 so we figured this would be our "go to" insurance for the next ten years or so.

Unfortunately it was too good to be true! They have now changed the terms and conditions so that the long term policies are only good up to age 50. You can still buy a short term policy for a trip of up to 30 days that is up to age 70, but that doesn't do us any good.

And I understand why they've done this... older people are simply a higher risk and I guess they figured out that it wasn't profitable to insure them long term.

Our current policy expires August 5th and we can't renew it. I think what we'll do is to self insure when we are in "cheap" countries. In 15 years of travel, we haven't needed to visit a doctor very often. And when we have had to, it's been inexpensive and likely wouldn't have been worth making a claim even if we had insurance. But we do realize the other side of it... we are getting older and as much as you take care of yourself, things can happen. 

I still think Heymondo is a great policy for people under age 50, or for short term trips for those up to age 70. And you can still save 5% by clicking through our link here. But it's unfortunate that we'll now have to waste a lot of time sorting through other options.

We took a bit of a day off yesterday. It was nice and quiet up here at the ski hill so we decided to stay another night. We did get out for a 5 km (3 mile) powerwalk though. Gotta keep the blood flowing!

The scenery sure does remind us of our Yukon trip in 2018.

Scenery along the way.

We brought our umbrellas with us in case it rained.

This is a typical Norwegian weekend cabin with a sod roof.

There are quite a few cabins up here.



Eventually we needed to open the umbrellas. 
But it was still a nice walk!

Overcast and showers again today, but we are headed further west. There's another bike ride we want to do... provided the weather cooperates!

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6 comments:

  1. If nothing else, you could put that premium aside for the "it may happen" events until you find a policy you like. Good luck with it - I dread doing that every year for my dh.

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    1. Yes, we have thought of that and that is probably what we will do. Other than going back to Canada at the end of the summer we don't have plans on being in any countries where healthcare is expensive. It is never fun trying to search our medical insurance and having to read all the fine print. :-(

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  2. Disappointing. We are just over 50 and our 1 year Heymondo policy just started in July. So I guess we should feel fortunate that we were able to lock in a few months ago when the 15% off deal was going on. At least we have a year to ponder options.

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    1. It is disappointing. We were quite happy with the Heymondo policy and their pricing.

      We are glad that we got to take advantage of the 15% discount and get in all locked in before this happened. Enjoy your year away and not having to worry about going through this again for at least the next year. :-)

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  3. This gest worse as you get older. I just turned 73 and travel insurance is huge. We did join skymed which provides evac from mexico and the carribean and we have mexican medicare which is pretty poor. Looking for some sort of insurance with a high deductible that would cover maybe 75K in case of an emergency where we need time to be stabilized enough to fly. We do put away $500 a month which has now grown to 11k. Once we inherit from my 96 year old parents if we can boost that to 100k, then we will just self insure, Once in our 80's then if we get sick we will probably just lie in front of a beer truck. Its not the small stuff that worries us, its things like being in an auto accident or heart attacks, strokes, etc. I never worried about it. I traveled for over a year in my 20's with no insurance. .

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    1. With the prices they charge for insurance as you get older we would just self insure. We have never paid for the SkyMed and probably never will. We have found that medical care aboard is a lot better than most "Westerners" think it is and that includes Mexico. We know a number of Mexicans as well as Canadians/Americans that have had nothing but good things to say about the medical care there. Yes, more help from the family is needed in the hospitals but the actual care that the doctors give has been top notch. We wouldn't hesitate to go to a Mexican hospital if the need arose.

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