Travel Insurance Advice

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 75% of Australian travellers take out travel insurance to go overseas. But QBE Travel Insurance Manager Peter Andrew believes even 25% is too great a percentage of people opting to take a chance on bad luck and foreign hospitals – many of which are overcrowded and poorly equipped.

“A quarter of travellers are uninsured and it can be a pretty sad situation when people have to mortgage houses or sell cars to be able to afford medical care for their loved ones,” he said.
“In a US hospital, if one of your children broke their leg, and you needed two days in hospital, it would cost you around $40,000 – maybe another $10,000 for surgery,” said QBE’s head of Travel Insurance.

Andrew warns that even though Australia has reciprocal rights with countries like the UK for Medicare-type cover, there’s no guarantee of the quality of care you might receive. “In the UK, an 8 year old girl was treated for a dog bite, but after stitching she was still a mess. The parents had to spend 8,500 pound to get work done by a plastic surgeon. They were fine because they had travel insurance.”

Novice travellers might be horrified to discover the vast difference between medical care in developing nations and our own. Even parts of Europe have inferior medical systems to Australia.
Andrew warns travellers not to expect miracles from public hospitals, even in wealthy Western nations.
“Many overseas hospitals that are government-subsidised have a “patch and dispatch” mentality. You might wait two years for a by-pass operation in the UK.”

Evacuation costs can also be staggering, warns Andrew.
“We just brought a woman back from Ho Chi Min City by air ambulance, which cost $85,000.
Vanuatu to Auckland is $50,000, Bali to Darwin is $27,000, Bali to Melbourne $70,000. That can be destroying if you don’t have medical care."

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