Travel Insurance

Before going to work at Disney, Disney requires you to purchase medical insurance at least for the first 120 days until you become eligible for their benefits. Deciding which insurance to purchase is a big pain! There are so many options out there and it is not a decision to make lightly because insurance is EXPENSIVE! You also need to ensure that after spending all that money on insurance you don’t get screwed over by the company when you do have an emergency over something you missed in their policy. By the end, when it was finally time for me to make the big buy, I had explored numerous insurance options and had even read (with the help of my mom) three different insurance policies. So, my friends, here I will chronicle my experience with travel insurance in hopes of making your decision easier.

DISCLAIMER: I am by no means an insurance expert, I am simply sharing what I have learned about travel medical insurance in hopes that it will help some of you as you purchase your own travel insurance.

NOTE: When you purchase insurance in Canada with the intent of using it in anther country, it is considered “emergency medical travel insurance”. When you buy insurance in the country you intend to use it in, it is just “medical insurance”. In this blog post, I will use the terms “travel insurance” and “medical insurance” interchangeably, but to be clear I purchased my insurance from Canada with the intent of using it when traveling to Orlando.

As mentioned above, Disney only requires you to purchase medical insurance for the first 120 days until you are eligible for their benefits. However, I have read on the facebook groups and some blogs that Disney benefits are not fantastic in terms of medical emergencies, but are good for dental, eye care, prescriptions, etc. (check out what Heather has to say about this on her blog: http://featheerland.blogspot.ca/2015/09/insurance.html) For this reason, I have read that many CRP’s either straight out purchase a year’s worth of insurance or end up extending their insurance once they are there. While I don’t plan to have any medical emergencies while I am in Orlando (knock on wood), I certainly would rather be safe than sorry. Therefore, I decided to buy one year’s worth of emergency medical insurance and then once I become eligible for Disney benefits I will still take advantage of them specifically for the dental and eye care coverage.

Shortly after accepting my offer I began scouring the internet for medical insurance options, however at this time I was still teaching full-time and with my crazy schedule I didn’t have a lot of time to focus on it. One insurance that I initially started looking at was Blue Cross because I know that they are reputable all over the world. On their website you can get a quote pretty quickly and easily. However, what I noticed was that their All Inclusive Medical plan which would cover you consistently for one full year was ridiculously expensive and their other option was their Annual Medical Plan which requires you to come home every couple of months (multi-trip coverage for up to a certain number of days). At first I thought the Annual Medical Plan would be a good fit for me because I do plan on coming home at least once. However, I was afraid to be constricted by a certain number of days. What if I couldn’t be home after exactly 6 months (180-day coverage) because of my schedule? And if I were to come home earlier than the 6-month mark then I would for sure have to come home again before the end of my Disney contract. This really stressed me out so I decided to look into other options before going with the first insurance I looked at.

My mom happens to be friends with an insurance agent for Sunlife, who in turn put me in touch with an insurance agent from AwayCare Traveler’s Emergency Medical. AwayCare has brokers who look at your health history and then find you the best travel insurance for you needs for the best price. I first had to fill out a quote information sheet where I gave some general information about myself such as my DOB, address, OHIP number, my travel dates and where I was going, as well as some health specific information. I had to declare any and all medical conditions I am currently affected with, all prescriptions I take, and my family doctor’s information. A piece of advice: DECLARE EVERYTHING! I listed all of my medical conditions, even some that don’t still currently affect me, even down to the fact that I require corrective lenses (I wear contacts). This did not affect my insurance at all, but if I hadn’t declared everything and something happened to me and my insurance provider found out about it, they would not provide coverage for me. The only things that will affect your chances of getting medical insurance are serious things like being advised by a physician not to travel, having a terminal illness, having metastatic cancer, requiring kidney dialysis, being prescribed home oxygen and/or having a bone marrow, stem cell or organ transplant. So to protect yourself, tell them every little thing about your health!

NOTE: Not all travel/medical insurance providers ask you to fill out a sheet as I did. For example, if I wanted to purchase Blue Cross, I could have done it online without even speaking to an agent.

So after sending in my quote information, I waited about a week when I got a call from a broker. I had to answer a couple more questions over the phone and then she sent me a quote for RSA insurance which would be $952.65 for the full year. The basics of RSA: $0 deductible, maximum $5 million coverage, included coverage for paramedical services such as chiropractor, physiotherapist, etc up to $300 per service, emergency dental up to $350 for relief of pain and up to $2000 to repair or replace teeth after an accidental blow to the mouth, would bring someone from home to you if you are hospitalized for more than seven (7) days and will pay for their food and accommodations up to $1500, hospital allowance up to $250, direct billing when possible. Sounds pretty good right? Well ladies and gentlemen, this is where reading the insurance policy thoroughly is SO important (thank you mom!). The policy included this little clause that said that if the person insured is to return to their home province during the period of coverage, the insurance becomes void. So what this means if that if I return home at some point over the 365 days, my insurance becomes terminated!!! When I called my insurance broker to clarify this, she said that this was in fact true and that if I wanted to return home I would have to call them and cancel my insurance, I would get reimbursed for the unused portion, and once I was leaving again I would have to call to re-purchase travel insurance for my remaining stay in Orlando. This seemed like a lot of work that I didn’t want to have to do every time I came home and so I asked my broker to look into an insurance that would allow me to return to Canada without the hassle.

While she was looking for a new policy for me, I also did some looking of my own and during this time I called CanAm insurance (referred to me by my auto insurance broker) and Blue Cross. Both of these plans were very similar to RSA in terms of the coverage provided and both of these insurance policies included multi-trip coverage up to a maximum number of days. What I learned from both of these insurance companies was that if you purchase multi-trip coverage up to a maximum number of days (that is, you can take an unlimited number of trips with a pre-determined length) but then you can’t come home before the maximum number of days is up, you can also “top-up” your insurance. EXAMPLE: Let’s say I purchased a 120-day travel insurance policy, meaning I could take an unlimited number of 120-day trips in a 365-day period, but I can’t come home after 120-days due to my work schedule, I can call my insurance agent and “top-up” by purchasing more insurance up until the point I can come home. This, I think, is good to know for those of you who maybe only buy 120 days of coverage at first but then decide you want to extend it, or good for those who really think they could make it home every couple of months but then something happens where you can’t. However, in the end, I decided that this plan was not for me because I felt like in the long run this could become very expensive if you continually had to top-up.

Finally, my insurance broker got back to me with another insurance policy from Manulife which would be $1058.52 for the full year. This policy was a bit more expensive (in comparison with RSA insurance) BUT it allows me to come home whenever I want to as much as I want without having to notify them. It also seemed to provide better coverage than the other policies I looked at. The basics of Manulife: $0 deductible, maximum $10 million coverage, included coverage for paramedical services such as chiropractor, physiotherapist, etc up to $700 per covered injury, emergency dental up to $300 for relief of pain and up to $3000 to repair or replace teeth after an accidental blow to the mouth, would bring someone from home to you if you are hospitalized for more than three (3) days and will pay for their food and accommodations up to $1000, hospital allowance up to $300, direct billing when possible. At this point I had read three different insurance policies and I felt like this one really suited me the best so I decided to go ahead and purchase the insurance.

A couple other things I learned about insurance that I think are noteworthy:

If you are buying a full year of insurance, you should expect it to be around $1000. It sounds expensive and it is, but in my opinion $1000 now is better than paying $5000 if and when you require medical attention in Florida.

In order to be eligible for 365 days of medical coverage, you must notify your province that you will be out of the country for one year. It is a requirement that you have valid GHIP coverage in order to be eligible for emergency medical insurance. In Ontario, your OHIP coverage is only valid for 212 days that you are out of the country. In order to be covered for the entire time while I am away, I must go to Service Ontario before I leave and extend my OHIP coverage. I don’t know the specifics in all other provinces but I think for all provinces your GHIP only covers you for a certain number of days while you are gone and you must notify them that you will be gone for a full year. Otherwise when you come home and go to the doctor you might have to pay because your GHIP might not be valid.

All insurance providers want you to call them before seeking medical attention. This way, they can direct you to hospitals and clinics that they have direct billing with so that you don’t have to pay out of pocket and wait to get reimbursed. If you are unable to make the call yourself, you should have someone call on your behalf. With Manulife, it actually says in the policy that if you seek medical attention without contacting them first, they will only cover 80% of the costs. Manulife provides you with a wallet size card that has the phone number you need to call as well as a place to write you name, coverage dates and policy number, so that you will always have a copy of your information with you. I have also listed this information in my medical ID on my iPhone. I also think it would be a really good idea to exchange medical insurance information with one or two close friends/roommates while you are in Orlando in case you are together when something happens and you can’t call but they can on your behalf.

When you purchase travel medical insurance, it is specifically for any emergencies that you might be facing, and care that you seek should be to alleviate acute pain and suffering. Therefore, these insurance plans will not cover you for routine doctors visits. One question I asked all of the insurance agents that I spoke to was if their policy would allow for follow-up appointments. The answer to this question was always “depends”, because they will only cover the follow-up appointment if it is deemed medically necessary.

One other question to ask and look for in the insurance policy is whether or not you are covered while working. I asked my insurance broker this question and basically as long as it is not included in the “Exclusions” section of the policy, you are covered. Work injuries could most certainly happen, especially working in F&B so this is definitely something to keep in mind.

So I think that's everything I have to say about travel insurance. I feel like many other blogs gloss this part over because it’s boring to talk about but I know that when I was starting the process of finding medical insurance I had a TON of questions about it and I wished that other blogs would talk about it more. So I hope with this post it can give you some extra information to be armed with when you begin looking into insurance yourself. If you have any questions about anything I said here or would like to take a look at one of the insurance policies I mentioned here (RSA, Blue Cross, Manulife), please feel free to contact me!