Posted 1/30/09 by J. Halsted

One of my girlfriends went to Asia recently (a volunteer vacation that took her into Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia & the Philippines, and maybe a couple more countries). She had been saving quite a while to do this and planned to spend a few months over there.

During the first week of her trip she had an appendicitis attack and had to have immediate surgery. She said that she was very lucky for two reasons: 1) She was in a major city when it happened and 2) she had purchased international travel medical insurance.

While I may take all I can with me to keep us safe when we travel I certainly don’t plan for emergency medical care, mostly because we are healthy. But so was she. This has made me rethink our travel a bit and look into travel insurance a bit more closely.

I found this site for a Free International Medical Insurance Quote. I input all the info requested and got an instant quote for Doug & I (children under 9 are free) It was not a lot of money for the peace of mind it brings.

Of course you want to read up on travel insurance yourself and see if it is worth it for you, personally. MultiNational Underwriters (www.mnui.com) has lots of information to help you decide.

Posted 10/30/2008 by Babak

Back in SA. Rouzeh was there to welcome me at the airport, after a very long flight, which was nice. She’s staying in Pretoria, close to her office, but I’m, at least for now, staying with Christo, in Johannesburg. Jo’burg, after all, is where it’s at.
The weather is on the warm side, but not too hot, with the gentle breeze that’s blowing most of the day. I signed a three month contract for a project with SAfAIDS, building an online contact database.

I’m, temporarily, renting a car with rent-a-wreck. It’s not too expensive and the car is not too close to being a proper wreck, though fairly close, and it does give me the freedom you need in Gauteng. Things are just too far apart, and there’s practically no public transport.

However, the brakes on the car are not all that great, which made me think of medical insurances while abroad.
I’m sort of insured, but it’s a gray area, as I’m out of my home country for such long stretches at a time. Particular my, supposedly continuous, ABNAMRO travel insurance doesn’t like that.
I’ve been very lucky over the years and never really needed any medical attention, while abroad. One minor exception is when I badly twisted an ankle in late 2006, I think it was. Also in Johannesburg. I visited a doctor and got some physiotherapy. However, because it was regular medical attention, no emergency evac or whatnot, I could submit the expenses to my regular medical insurance. Though, in the end, I didn’t as the combined expenses were less than the discount I would get when not claiming anything.

But hoping or expecting to be lucky is a very bad insurance policy. In the back of my mind, I’ve considered for a long time to get one of those international continuous travel insurances. Mighty convenient, but, so I heard, also quite pricey. Recently, one that was brought to my attention was a package from MultiNational Underwriters (they can give you a free international travel insurance quote). They’ve got a host of packages. For example, I checked their international medical insurance package, which was cheaper than I expected, though not as cheap as I would hope, at around 100 dollars per month.
A quote for their travel insurance package, for one year, came in at 732 dollars, which is a reasonable deal, I think.

For my regular Dutch medical insurance, I pay around 120 euros per month, so if the coverage with MultiNational underwriters is the same or similar, just switching to them for this would already be financially attractive.