Three Lesser-Known Travel Insurance Coverage Options For Family Travel
Have you ever considered what would happen if you became seriously ill or injured abroad, or if there was a natural disaster while celebrating the holidays with your family? Did you purchase a travel insurance policy that can get your family out of a foreign country and back to the US?
Coverage for families should go beyond basic medical and flight cancellations or delays
Three lesser-known coverage options – Return of Minor Children, Emergency Reunion and Emergency Medical Evacuation – are a must-have for any families traveling overseas when returning home requires air travel.
Return of Minor Children
One type of family coverage, Return of Minor Children – typically not offered by many travel insurance providers – might be the most important of all should one or both parents suffer catastrophic injury or illness. Return of Minor Children will pay for transport of your children back home to a parent or relative who can care for them during your recovery.
Emergency Reunion
Emergency reunion is valuable if an injured or ill family member cannot be transported. Coverage would pay for family members to be reunited should they be in different locations. If one or both parents are incapacitated, the Return of Minor Children coverage would pay for the children to return home to relatives until the parents are well enough for repatriation back to the States.
Emergency Medical Evacuation
Emergency medical evacuation will repatriate an ill or injured family member back home from a foreign country. Most policies offer emergency medical evacuation, but you should make sure your policy limits are at least $100,000. This may sound like a lot, but children are more prone to accident or injury, and repatriation of an injured or ill patient is expensive.
Medical air evacuation typically begins at $10,000 to $25,000 depending on the distance to the destination and can easily reach six figures depending on the level of care required. Nurse accompaniment typically begins at $15,000 – with specialized technicians, doctors and life-saving equipment – this figure can easily surpass $100,000.
Ambulance transport by ground is often not feasible in remote or exotic locales. If you are vacationing in areas such as these, air evacuation is the only option. Carefully review the conditions and terms of your policy’s emergency medical evacuation.
Emergency medical evacuation pays for the injured or ill person only. If all members of the family want to return home at the same time, ensure that you have Trip Interruption coverage, which transports the rest of your family home, among other benefits.
Decide what’s best for your family, you can’t put a price on peace of mind
Do the math and decide what makes sense for you to spend on travel insurance for peace of mind when traveling with your loved ones. A holiday free of worries from unforeseen incidents is guaranteed to be an enjoyable one.
About the Author: Kristi Myllenbeck is a travel insurance expert and content specialist at VisitorsCoverage whose mission is to keep travelers updated with the latest and most relevant travel insurance information.
It was interesting to read about how return of minor children insurance can help cover the costs of transportation to a guardian who can take care of them during recovery. I would imagine that finding the right company to help with things like ambulance driving could be very helpful. This way healthcare providers and facilities can rely on an outside company focusing on the drivers and vehicles.