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Travel insurers rip off the seriously ill
By Sarah Pennells
If you've suffered from a serious illness and have had to buy travel insurance, you know just how difficult it can be.
Cancer, heart disease and stroke are three of the most serious conditions that can turn the job of getting affordable insurance into 'mission impossible'; but there are others.
A woman who'd been diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago was told that she would have to pay £1,000 for travel insurance to cover a three-day trip to Spain. Yes, that's right - £1,000 for three days. It would be funny if it wasn't so shocking.
She is responding well to treatment, is active and has been given the all-clear by her consultant to go on holiday. But insurers either didn't want to know or would only insure her if they could exclude claims arising from her cancer.
That wasn't something that she wanted to sign up to. Her logic was if she were to trip and break her leg, the insurer might try and find a way of linking the accident to the cancer or to the drugs she's been prescribed.
Her experience is far from unique. A study by the cancer charity CancerBackup revealed that 90% of those who contacted its helpline found it difficult or impossible to get cover for their illness, despite the fact that only 1.6% had made a cancer-related claim on travel insurance in the past.
Why is this? Well, because many of the insurers use software programmes to help assess risk in cases like these.
Unfortunately, many people with serious illnesses don't know that companies such as Mediquote exists - a specialist company that uses nurses rather than software to help assess the risk.
CancerBackup says that around 1.2 million people in the UK are living with cancer. It's estimated that 2.5 million have heart disease. Add to that other serious illnesses that can put insurers off and that's a lot of people who may struggle to get cover. Of course, there are things you can do to make yourself more insurable, such as avoiding the US, where medical costs are colossal, or not going anywhere too remote (where you might need a helicopter to get you to hospital).
Maybe it's time that insurers considered exactly how many people they are nervous about covering - and whether their attitude really does reflect the risk involved.
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