Minimal Policy Recommendations
I highly recommend travel insurance. Usually you can usually get this set up 2-4 weeks before you go. I recommend at least $50,000 for medical and at least $50,000 – $100,000 for medical evacuation. You can also include varying degrees of coverage for lost baggage and travel cancellation. Please make sure you read your policy carefully. If something is specifically not mentioned in the policy then it will not be covered.
Please insure everything that you can not afford to lose. If you travel with a lot of computers, cameras and equipment, make sure they are covered. If you can not afford insurance (at least the medical side) then you may want to rethink your travel plans. Some policies include children at no additional cost so it may be much more affordable than you think.
Also if you are coming from the US you may want to keep at least minimal insurance in the states, especially if you are going in and out of the country. If you or your family is diagnosed with a major illness during travel (heart attack, cancer, broken bones with repeat surgeries) then you may end up having follow up care in the US. We lowered our policy during open enrollment but we are still keeping a baseline policy.
World Nomads
World Nomads is a great place to start. They are generally highly recommended on travel forums and if you forget to get coverage before your trip you may be able to add it after your trip starts. We will likely use them for our next trip if the cost is similar since they seem to be a recommended so much in my research.
Insure My Trip
For our trip I went through insuremytrip.com for estimates. The first 2 months for Canada and Costa Rica we used John Hancock. We did file a claim when my 10 year needed x-rays of her wrist. We contacted the insurance company prior to going to the hospital to make sure we would be covered. We had to pay the hospital directly and then filed a claim to be reimbursed. I think the documents had to be scanned and submitted by e-mail. This was done 3 months ago. Not sure if we got paid yet or not – I guess we need to check. … OK, we checked and it has not gone through – something about it not scanning or submitting correctly, husband is trying again so may be we’ll get that money back – or may be we won’t, we’ll see.
Allianz
For the second half of our trip we also used insuremytrip.com. The company we ended up going with is Allianz (but you can book through them directly through my link). Luckily we have not had to file a claim (although may be we should for B’s lost bag).
We also had a really inexpensive quote from AAA when we went to get our international drivers license. The office was busy the day we went in and we did not get a call back so we ended up going with an online search instead. If you have to get an international license anyway – might as well as about insurance while you are there.
