Did you know that more than 6 million Americans break at least one bone every year? When you’re traveling to a different state or country, breaking a bone or getting injured in another way can bring your trip to a complete halt. Not only will you have to wait around to get your injury fixed and for it to heal, but you will also have to pay for those dreaded medical bills.

The problem is that while you might have great insurance in the United States, but not travel health insurance. The insurance you have from the states likely won’t cover you when you’re in another country.

For that reason, you’ll have to deal with huge medical bills if you get injured in another country. While this might sound like a nightmare (and it is) there is a solution: travelers’ health insurance. By having health insurance to cover you while you’re traveling, you won’t have to worry about getting injured while you’re abroad. 

Keep reading and learn more about the reasons you should get travel insurance before you go on your next big trip. 

What Is Travel Health Insurance Exactly?

If you’ve never gotten international travel health insurance before, you might not know much about it or how it works. Is it really any different from the health insurance you normally use back home? More than that, is it really worth the extra cost?

Many people brush off getting travel health insurance when traveling. They may think, “What are the chances that I’ll be injured when in another country? I’m always careful, so there’s no way I’ll get hurt.”

But whether or not you’re careful has nothing to do with whether or not you’ll get injured when traveling. Many injuries are freak accidents. For example, you might be taking an enjoyable stroll down one of the many narrow streets in Italy when a scooter comes out of nowhere and hits you. 

Or you might be going down a flight of stairs from your hotel room only to twist an ankle. Because many injuries are accidental and unexpected, you can’t plan for them. You shouldn’t travel thinking that you are immune to accidents because your travels might end up with huge medical bills at the end of them. 

Travel health insurance is actually a very good type of health insurance and it covers a wide variety of medical expenses. For example, travel insurance covers everything from dental treatments, ambulance fees, operating room fees, hospital fees, and more. However, there are limits to travel health insurance. 

That’s because this type of insurance is designed to cover medical emergencies. If you aren’t experiencing a medical emergency, you won’t be able to use your travel health insurance to pay. For example, if you want to get a cosmetic procedure while you’re abroad, your travel health insurance won’t pay for it.

Keep in mind that there is more than one type of insurance. 

Types of Travel Insurance You Should Know About

When it comes to health insurance for travel, there are two main types that you need to know about. The first includes stand-alone health insurance plans while the other includes travel insurance plants that are comprehensive. Though these plans are similar, they have some important differences that can make or break your decision when choosing one over the other. 

Stand-alone travel insurance plans are pretty simple. As the name suggests, these plans stand on their own and they don’t include anything except health insurance. This can be ideal for people who are only concerned about their health while traveling. 

Stand-alone insurance plans cover medical and dental expenses. However, with dental expenses, there is usually a limit of $500 that the insurance will cover. Some insurance plans may have better coverage, but after you reach the dental payout limit, you will have to pay for the rest on your own. 

The downside of stand-alone insurance plans is that they don’t cover other travel problems such as lost luggage or delayed luggage. They also don’t cover trip cancellations. These problems can be a huge letdown when it comes to your travels and they tend to be much more common than travel injuries.

If you want to kill several birds with one stone, you might want to opt for comprehensive travel insurance plans instead. Comprehensive plans include most of the medical and dental coverage that stand-alone plans have. However, as an extra bonus, comprehensive travel plans also include flight cancelation, lost luggage, and so on. 

This is especially important if you are someone who travels a lot. The more you travel, the more likely you will be to lose your luggage or miss your flight. Without comprehensive travel insurance, these problems can be detrimental to your trip. 

You Won’t Lose Your Travel Investment If You Have Travel Insurance

One of the biggest reasons to get travel insurance from a company like Shelter Bay Financial is, of course, to save money. Let’s say you have a luxurious trip planned. You plan to hop around all the best cities in Europe and go sightseeing all the while. 

But as soon as you arrive at your first destination, you trip getting out of your taxi and you break your ankle. Once you get to the hospital and receive treatment, you’ll find that the treatment costs you thousands of dollars. For a moment you might think that your ordinary health insurance will cover it, but then you remember that since you’re in another country, your health insurance won’t be able to help you at all.

So, you’ll be stuck with thousands of dollars in medical bills that you wanted to instead use to take you across Europe. The result is that you’ll have to cut your trip short and pay for the treatment for your broken ankle instead. While this may sound like the worst-case scenario, problems similar to this one often happen to those who are traveling abroad. 

While you can hope that you won’t get injured, hoping won’t be enough to keep the medical bills at bay if you do happen to get injured. If you have travel insurance, you won’t have to worry so much about your entire trip blowing up in your face. Because your travel medical insurance will cover most of the cost of your injury, you’ll still have the money to finish your big trip. 

This is important because there’s nothing more disappointing than not being able to go on that trip that you’ve been planning so long for. But the reasons to get travel medical insurance don’t stop there.

You Won’t Go Broke as Long as You Have Travel Health Insurance

In some cases, getting medical treatment in another country can cost you more than your travel investment. Depending on the scenario, you might have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatment instead of just a few thousand. In this case, you not only are out of your travel investment but you would also be shoved into a financial pit that would be very difficult to crawl out of. 

To most people, this sounds like a terrifying scenario, but it is also a very realistic scenario if you don’t have travel health insurance. Keep in mind that some countries may charge more for medical treatment than others. But even so, you are likely to soon have an empty bank account if you get injured in another country without health insurance. 

The worst part is that many foreign hospitals want you to pay for treatment upfront. If you’ve been in a serious accident such as a car accident and have broken several bones or have other injuries, the cost of your treatment will be immense. If you don’t have insurance to cover those costs, you could be in big trouble. 

This is not to mention that you’ll likely have to pay for medical transportation such as an ambulance or an airlift as well, both of which can be very expensive. If you’re worried about money, then you shouldn’t worry too much about the cost of travel health insurance itself. 

Even though the cost of the insurance might put a small dent in your budget, it’s nothing compared to the medical costs you might have to deal with if you get injured in another country. So, in the long run, there’s no harm (and plenty of benefits) when it comes to getting travel insurance.

Don’t Let Small Accidents Ruin Your Big Trip

No one wants to be stressed out of their wits when traveling. Rather, you should want to be relaxed and enjoy yourself as much as possible. After all, enjoying yourself is what vacations are for. 

But you won’t be able to enjoy yourself if you’re worried about being in an accident every second. Being afraid of potential medical bills you’ll have to pay if you slip on the sidewalk or break your risk can make your travels thoroughly unenjoyable. More than that, if you do happen to get injured, the smallest of injuries can end up ruining your whole trip. 

Falling down and breaking your wrist wouldn’t normally be that big of a deal back in the states. All you would need to do is hurry to the doctor, get an X-ray, and have the doctor treat the injury. Since your insurance covered most of the treatment, you would have nothing to worry about and you could go on living your life without too much stress.

But if you fall and break your wrist in another country without travel health insurance, this could ruin months and years of financial planning for you. The treatment for the broken bones will cost you thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands. Not only would your trip be ruined, but your finances would be in shambles as well. 

As you can see, there is no such thing as a small accident when you’re abroad without health insurance. This is also true for non-accident-related travel problems such as losing your luggage or having to cancel your flight. You can end up losing a lot of money when you lose your primary travel bag or if you end up missing your flight. 

With travel insurance, you won’t have to worry so much. 

You Don’t Have to Spend All Your Money on Insurance

Many people are wary of getting travel health insurance because they don’t want to spend a lot of money. However, there are plenty of insurance plans that are affordable. That way, there is a travel insurance plan for every budget. 

Many people don’t know that travel insurance can be affordable. All you really need to do is a bit of research on the internet and you’ll find all sorts of travel insurance plans. Once you find the right insurance company for you, you’ll be able to browse what they have to offer and see what plan might best fit your lifestyle.

As mentioned before, stand-alone travel insurance and comprehensive travel insurance are both important to consider. If you are a frequent traveler, you might want to opt for comprehensive travel insurance so you’ll be completely covered. If you are not too worried about lost luggage or flight cancellations, you can opt for stand-alone travel insurance instead.

Whatever you choose, you are sure to find a plan that can fit your budget.

Everything You Need to Know About Travel Health Insurance

There are many reasons to purchase travel health insurance and few reasons not to. Without travel health insurance, you risk getting injured in a foreign country and having to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for treatment. Not only would this ruin your trip, but it could also ruin your finances. 

To learn more, explore our website.