Do You Actually Need Travel Insurance?

Summary

All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life

Episode: Do You Actually Need Travel Insurance?

Host: Chris Hutchins
Date: June 17, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Chris Hutchins, self-proclaimed life hacker and savvy points maximizer, undertakes a comprehensive deep-dive into travel insurance. Through personal experience (including a hospital visit in Japan) and extensive research, Chris compares standalone travel insurance, what your credit cards actually cover (and don’t), and your existing medical insurance. He aims to give listeners a clear roadmap for when travel insurance is necessary, when your cards are good enough, and what to look out for in both policies and real-world emergencies.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. What Does Travel Insurance Really Cover? (01:32–13:18)

• Components of a Standard Travel Insurance Policy:
  • Trip Cancellation: Reimburses prepaid, nonrefundable expenses if you must cancel for an unforeseen reason (sickness, injury, death). Coverage is based on the amount you declare and costs typically 5–8% of trip price.
  • Cancel for Any Reason: An optional upgrade (~10% of trip cost, must buy soon after booking), lets you cancel for any reason with partial reimbursement (50–80%).
  • Trip Change/Interruption: Covers cost for changing plans mid-trip. Some policies go up to 150% of prepaid costs (for high last-minute emergency costs).
  • Trip Delay/Missed Connection: Covers reasonable extra expenses for delays (typically $100–$200/day up to $500–$2,000; generally not worth buying policy just for this alone).
  • Baggage Loss/Delay: Small caps ($250–$2,500), many exclusions (especially electronics and expensive gear).
  • Medical Evacuation & Repatriation: Pays for transport to nearest suitable hospital and/or bringing you home if seriously ill or deceased. Coverage limits $50,000–$1,000,000.
  • Medical & Dental Emergency: Non-routine medical care (limits vary, dental is low).
  • Accidental Death & Dismemberment: Lump sum for severe injury or death ($50,000–$1M).
  • Add-ons: Rental car, extreme sports, theme parks, higher baggage limits, etc.

“If you lose a free night certificate or you lose points or miles, there is not a single policy I’ve seen that will reimburse them. If you know of one, let me know.”
—Chris Hutchins (03:45)

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2. Travel Insurance Pricing Realities (13:18–17:24)

• Cost calculator variables: Number of travelers, their age, trip cost, destination.
• Sample Quotes: $20–$100 per adult for basic medical/trip issue coverage (no trip cost); add 5–8% of trip price if covering expensive nonrefundable prepaids.
• Annual policies: Economical if you travel frequently (6+ trips/year).
• Geographical exclusions: Many countries in the Middle East and Africa (e.g., Israel, UAE, Sudan) are often excluded.

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3. What Your Premium Credit Cards Actually Cover (17:24–47:31)

a. Cards With Strong Coverage

• Top Cards: Chase Sapphire Reserve, Venture X Business, Amex Platinum (and equivalents).
• Covered Categories:
  • Trip Cancellation/Interruption (up to $10k/person/trip, total limits vary; see timestamps below)
  • Trip Delay (typically $500 after 6-hour delay)
  • Delayed/Lost Baggage
  • Emergency Evacuation ($100k–$1M)
  • Travel Accident Insurance ($100k–$1M, though only for severe injury or death)
  • Primary Rental Car Insurance

“A big takeaway I have here is that if you want these coverages, it might be worth using a card even if it earns slightly less points and miles, because it’s saving you from having to get a travel insurance policy in the first place.”
—Chris Hutchins (19:38)

b. Nuances and Limitations

• You must pay for the relevant travel portion with the covered card to be eligible.
• Caps vary widely between issuers (see breakdown at 21:00).
• Awards/miles bookings: Policies don’t reimburse lost points, but will cover taxes/fees and sometimes redeposit fees (21:48).
• Not all cards cover hotels/tours, and some only cover flight/transportation.
• Only “covered reasons” trigger claims—these vary, but commonly include illness/injury, death, carrier bankruptcy, severe weather. No “cancel for any reason” coverage.

“Wells Fargo Autograph Journey had the most number of situations that were covered... things like severe weather... terrorism... military orders... quarantine.”
—Chris Hutchins (24:43)

c. Each Coverage Type at a Glance

• Trip Cancellation/Interruption (19:11–26:00): Use travel card with best protection for non-refundable bookings. Only consider insurance if coverage caps are too low or you need cancel-for-any-reason flexibility.
• Trip Delay (28:10–30:02): Credit cards (especially premium) typically have superior benefits to insurance.
• Baggage Loss/Delay (31:31–34:01): Card policies match or exceed insurance unless you travel with expensive/pro gear—most policies exclude electronics/jewelry/etc.
• Emergency Evacuation/Repatriation (34:03–37:05): Amex Platinum and similar cards are “gold standard”—no coverage limits, doesn’t require trip to be booked with card if emergency is >100 miles from home; other cards often cap at $100k.
• Travel Accident Insurance (37:13–39:32): Only covers death/dismemberment/loss of sight. Not for minor accidents.
• Medical Emergency (39:40): Exceptionally weak on almost all cards (Chase Sapphire Reserve/Venture X Business offer $2,500 max, with $50 deductible), so insurance can be essential if you want robust medical protection.
• Rental Car Collision Damage (40:24–44:47): Most premiums cards offer primary CDW coverage if you pay with the card and decline rental agency’s coverage. Always check country exclusions (notably Italy, Israel, Ireland, Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand).

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4. What’s Not Covered by Credit Cards (Big Medical Gaps) (47:31–57:21)

• US Medical Insurance Abroad: Group employer plans and ACA-exchange policies usually cover EMERGENCIES overseas—however, reimbursement is “pay and claim,” and everything is out-of-network unless part of a global partner (e.g., BCBS's Blue Global Core). Post-stabilization, routine, and non-emergency care are generally NOT covered (50:38).
• Medicare: Original Medicare has zero coverage abroad; Plan G Medigap covers emergencies up to $50k, 20% coinsurance and $250 deductible (52:07).
• Health Sharing Plans: Varies widely. CHM covers foreign emergencies if non-elective, but expect translation, currency conversion, and no transport coverage.
• Non-Emergency Medical: Not covered abroad by US policies except rare urgent care situations—standard travel insurance steps in here (i.e., ear infections, minor injuries, dental emergencies, mild illness).
• Field/Rescue: Not covered by typical evacuation insurance. Need specialized coverage (mountaineering, diving, adventure travel).

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5. Specialty Scenarios and Stand-alone Insurance Types (57:21–62:20)

• Evacuation to Hospital of Choice: Only available via specialized plans (e.g., Medjet, Global Rescue, Airmed). Regular policies only evacuate to “nearest suitable” hospital, not necessarily home or your preferred facility.
  • Pricing: ~$315–$435 annually/person/family. (Higher with security evacuation add-on.)
  • Policies such as Medjet or DAN (Diver’s Alert Network) for diving, Redpoint for mountaineering/search/rescue.
• Search & Rescue: Covered by specialty providers, not standard travel or card coverage.

“If you’re doing anything very unique that you know is off the beaten path, off the grid, that’s kind of something that would be a trigger for me.”
—Chris Hutchins (62:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On relying on cards:

  "I thought my credit cards had me covered. But ... it turns out I was wrong in both directions. Some things I was sure my cards covered, they didn’t, and some things I thought I was taking a risk on, I was actually protected from all along." (00:00)

• On credit card perks’ fine print:

  "The teaser here is that the Chase Sapphire Reserve is the card with the best benefits." (20:54)

• Regarding the best use of primary rental coverage:

  "Filing a claim to my US car insurance policy feels like a recipe for getting my rates to go up. So I would much rather use an alternative insurance provider." (40:51)

• On emergencies abroad:

  "If you have a health situation already, a preexisting condition, a pregnancy that you want to make sure is protected... that’s a circumstance where I would look into a policy that covered it." (55:13)

• On the complexity of evacuation coverage:

  "Medical evacuation doesn’t mean come get me where I am. It’s usually transport me from hospital to hospital ... If you want to be picked up where you are ... there are specialty medical insurances that will cover you." (59:41–60:29)

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Practical Guidelines From Chris

When Do You Actually Need Travel Insurance? (62:20–End)

• Get travel insurance if:
  • You lack a premium credit card with travel insurance.
  • You’re taking an expensive, non-refundable trip (exceeds card coverage, want cancel-for-any-reason).
  • You have a health plan that doesn’t clearly cover emergencies abroad (e.g., basic Medicare).
  • You need non-emergency medical/interruption or want specific coverage for pregnancy, pre-existing conditions, field rescue, scuba, extreme sports, or evacuation to hospital of choice.
• Cards alone cover most other scenarios:
  • “Do you need travel insurance? Probably not. Will you find podcasts and people who sell travel insurance that tell you you do? Yes. But I think my plan going forward is put all travel costs that I want travel insurance for on a Chase Sapphire reserve card, and that solves almost everything."
• Consider annual specialty policies (Medjet, DAN, etc.) for frequent or adventure travel.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Topic | Timestamp | |---|---| | What Travel Insurance Covers | 01:32–13:18 | | Example & Cost Breakdown | 13:18–17:24 | | What Your Credit Cards Cover | 17:24–47:31 | | Where Credit Cards Fall Short (Medical Gaps) | 47:31–57:21 | | Specialist/Evacuation Polices & Field Rescue | 57:21–62:20 | | Practical Advice/Decision Framework | 62:20–End |

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Closing Remark

Chris concludes by teasing an upcoming episode on hidden credit card benefits and reiterates his advice: "For most trips, especially if you have a premium credit card, you probably don’t need travel insurance. If you do need extra protection for medical, risky activities, or expensive trips, that’s when insurance makes sense."

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For further info, recommendations, and links, Chris refers listeners to allthehacks.com and invites emails at [e-mail].

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This summary captures all core concepts, advice, and distinctions explored by Chris. For anyone booking a big trip, it’s a must-listen—or must-read!

Transcript

[A]

I don't usually buy travel insurance. I always figured my credit cards had me covered. But I recently went back and read the fine print. Not just on one card, but more than a dozen of them, and it turns out I was wrong in both directions. Some things I was sure my cards covered, they didn't, and some things I thought I was taking a risk on, I was actually protected from all along. Even the stuff I figured out the hard way after a hospital visit in Japan turned out to be more complicated than I originally thought. So this time I went really deep. What travel insurance actually is, what it costs, what your cards really do and don't. And I took a proper look at the medical side, which is where there were a lot more surprises. By the end of this, you'll know which policies are worth it, when you actually need one, and what to look for. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, leave a comment or share it with a friend. And if you want to keep upgrading your money points in life, click follow or subscribe okay, before we jump into

[B]

this episode, I have to share that

[A]

as of this episode coming out, There are currently four brand new best ever welcome offers of 100, 000 points or more on a few personal and business cards. Between my wife and I, we've actually had all four of these cards, but we haven't both had all four, so we're for sure picking up at least two of them. If you want to check them out, you can go to allthehacks.com June which I'm also going to link to in the Show Notes or as always, you can find links to all the best card offers anytime hacks.com cards and thanks in advance for using our links to help support us. It really means a lot.

[B]

Okay, to kick this episode off, I

[A]

thought I'd start by running through the actual components of a travel insurance policy. This is the kind of thing you would buy online from various different companies and it contains a lot of different things in one package. So the first one is called trip cancellation and that's what reimburses you for any unused prepaid and non refundable trip payments. Think flights, hotels, activities. If you cancel the entire trip before departure for a covered unforeseen reason. So that could be that you get an illness, an injury, a death from you, or a family member or a traveling companion. And how much is covered on a typical travel insurance policy is really up to you. And the actual costs because you put in your trip cost and the policy pricing is keyed off your trip cost. And for some of the free policies you might get from your credit card, those limits might be as low as $1,000. And many policies can go up to 100,000 plus as long as you're putting that amount in. Now, know that those policies that are paid typically charge about 5 to 8% of that trip cost to cover it. And it's only covered for those specific reasons. So if you had a trip that cost $20,000, you're probably going to pay 1,000 to $1,500 to be able to have trip cancellation insurance. There's also some exclusions for things like theme parks and other things that you might have to read, but for the most part, this is to cover your flights, your hotels and some activities. If you are someone booking with points and miles, I have not found a policy that considers the cost of any non refundable or non cancelable award bookings other than the hard dollars you pay. So if there's a booking fee or a cancel fee, sure. But if you lose a free night certificate or you lose points or miles, there is not a single policy I've seen that will reimburse them. If you know of one, let me know. Also, if you have a flight that you cancel and it's not refundable to cash, but it is refundable to flight credits, some of these policies actually won't cover those costs because you're getting back the credits and they will only cover you if after that credit expires, you follow up and prove that it expired unused. Now, one thing that you can do on many policies is upgrade them to a cancel for any reason. And that allows you to cancel for any reason. Like it says now, typically in that circumstance, you're not going to get a hundred percent of your trip costs covered like you would if you canceled for specific reasons. You might get 50 to 80% back. And sometimes you have to choose which one you want and spend more. But it gives you the ability to cancel before departure for any reason as long as you bought the upgrade to that cancel for any reason insurance within a very short window of booking the trip. You can't wait three months after you booked a trip and ad cancel for any reason. And it's pretty obvious why. That usually takes the cost from 5 to 8% up to around 10%. So if you have a $20,000 vacation, it's going to cost you about $2,000 to protect those costs with cancel for any reason insurance. Now the next is trip change insurance, and that is not always offered, but sometimes it also covers you up to a certain amount for changing a trip but not canceling it. But the big one that's kind of paired with trip cancellation is trip interruption. And that reimburses you for unused, prepaid, non refundable costs. If you have to change your trip to get home in the middle of a trip for an unforeseen reason, again, it still has to be an unforeseen reason. And like cancellation insurance, it usually covers 100% of the trip cost. But I have seen some policies that don't include this. Some that cover 50% and then some that actually go above and cover 150%. Because you know, sometimes if you actually need a last minute trip to get home in the middle of a trip because you know, family member is sick or passes away, that cost could be really expensive because it's last minute. And so those two kind of go together, trip cancellation and interruption. And a few policies have a trip change component of it. Now that's usually before you leave or once you're on your trip. There are a few things that kick in. So one is trip delay insurance. So that's going to reimburse you for any additional expenses or transportation cost when your trip gets delayed. And usually it's at least three hours delayed, sometimes it's six hours, sometimes it could be higher. But this particular insurance is usually pretty low. So on most policies that you pay for, it looked like it was about 100 to $200 a day and caps out at about 500 to $2,000. So obviously if you have one of these policies and you get delayed, great. But you know, I probably wouldn't get a policy just for this specific benefit. A couple of policies also covered misconnections where in a similar situation, if your arrival was delayed and you missed a connection, they'd cover you for somewhere between 500 and $1,000. So again, small dollar amounts, if that's

[B]

a really expensive flight, that's not going

[A]

to be that helpful. And it's not always covered. So that is trip delay and you know, sometimes missed connection. Now also on your trip, you might have issues with your bags. So there's lost bag and bag delay coverage. So this is going to reimburse you for the luggage and belongings you have that are lost, stolen or damaged or destroyed during your trip. But the challenge here is that there are so many exclusions. Things like electronics, phones, jewelry, business equipment. A lot of policies exclude all of those things. And even if they didn't, the total cap For a policy on lost bags is usually between $520 $500. So some of us don't carry more than that ever when we travel. But if you bring in a computer and an iPad and a phone, not only are those usually going to be excluded, but even if they weren't, the total cost of those three items is going to be way over the limit for almost every policy I've seen. Now, if your bags get delayed and don't show up, bag delay coverage is going to reimburse you the cost of any necessary or reasonable items you need to purchase. When you have that delay. Depending on the policy, it might need to be a three or a 12 hour delay. Sometimes it might need to be an overnight delay, but it's really going to cover you for somewhere between 100 and $750. So if you need a few things, toiletries, some clothes for a meeting, it'll probably be enough to cover that.

[B]

But if you had a photo shoot and you had a bunch of equipment,

[A]

it's probably not going to cover you in any way there. I don't remember if it has the

[B]

same exclusions, but I would imagine things like electronics are not going to be

[A]

replaced for a three hour del. Let's move on to a couple of the things that are a little bit more focused on health. And one of those is medical evacuation insurance and repatriation. So that's going to pay the usual and customary transportation costs to evacuate you to the nearest suitable hospital when it is medically necessary, usually as deemed by a doctor in a hospital situation. And then sometimes it also will return you home once you're stabilized or if you pass away while you're traveling, it'll help repatriate your remains back to your home country. So this policy is usually going to cover you from somewhere between 50,000 to $1,000,000. Now, if you do need this and you're needing to be transferred in the middle of some serious health complications, this could require chartering a jet. It could be very, very expensive. Not just a regular jet, but a medical focused jet. And so that's why the policy goes up pretty high in cost. But keep in mind that this is for transporting from medical facility to medical facility. This usually, if not almost always does not cover you to be transported from

[B]

a circumstance where you're not yet at a medical facility.

[A]

So if you're out in the middle of the rainforest and you break your leg and you need to get to a medical facility, that's going to be a field rescue or search and Recovery policy. And that is separate and not included in almost every major medical policy I found. There's also political security and disaster evacuation. Evacuation so very similar. It'll cover your transportation and reasonable cost to get you out of an area. When you have to interrupt your trip due to a covered political security or natural disaster event, and you usually have to do that within 14 days of the event, you can't let it happen and then wait a while and say, oh, now I want to go home. This isn't on every policy, but when it is, it usually covers somewhere between 50 and $150,000. On the medical side, another really big component of this is the medical and dental expense coverage, usually for injuries or sicknesses, not for routine medical care while you're on your trip up to a limit. And that limit is very wide. Some policies it's $10,000, some it's $500,000. But almost every policy has a very, very low dental limit of somewhere around $750. Then there is accidental death and dismemberment insurance or travel accident insurance, and that's going to pay you a percentage of a fixed amount for death or loss of limbs, sight, et cetera. That's usually anywhere from 50 to $100,000. But in some policies, it goes all the way up to $1 million. And then on most travel insurance policies, there are a ton of add ons you can add onto the policy. That could be rental car coverage to cover you when you're renting a car in a foreign country or while traveling. That could be extreme sports coverage, which will extend your medical coverage, usually to cover things that happen from diving, rock climbing, skydiving, those kinds of things. There are a bunch of other things depending on the policy, where you might be able to add theme park coverage or increased coverage on bags or increased trip delay coverage to get a longer window. So that's very dependent by policy. So to recap at a high level, when you look at a travel insurance policy and the kinds of things you want to protect, it's primarily the cost of the trip, which would be your trip cancellation and interruption. It's the cost of what happens on the trip that could be trip delay, lost bags, delayed bags, missed connections. And then there's what happens when you're on the trip and something goes wrong. And that's medical evacuation, medical care, political and security evacuation, and accidental death and dismemberment. And then a bunch of add ons. This episode is brought to you by zocdoc. There are moments where you want to see a doctor? Someone good, someone in your network. But the thought of calling around to find an appointment is so stressful. Well good news. That is exactly what ZocDoc solves. I know because I had the exact experience the first time I used it. ZocDoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors so you can find someone you love. You can search by specialty or symptom across 200 plus specialties and pull up real patient reviews to get a sense of who they are. When you find someone you see their real time availability and can book instantly. Appointments typically happen within 24 to 72 hours and sometimes they're even same day. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.comAllTheHacks to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. That's z o c-o c.com AllTheHacks Zocdoc.com AllTheHacks thanks Zocdoc for sponsoring this message. This episode is brought to you by Deleteme One of the smartest things I did a few years ago was clean up my digital footprint. And that started with Deleteme. There are hundreds of data brokers whose job is to collect and sell your personal information. Things like home address, phone number, email, even your relatives names. And I tried removing that data myself at first and it was a total game of whack a mole. After spending hours barely making a dent, I switched to Delete Me. Since then, Deleteme has been continuously finding and removing my personal information from all of those sites and just as importantly, keeping it from quietly popping back up again. I've now signed up my entire family for Deleteme and it's one of those things that I just don't have to think about anymore.

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

the things they want to know are

[A]

how many passengers, how much did the trip cost, how old are they and where are you going? And if you have a trip cost when you paid that cost, because they

[B]

want to make sure that if they're

[A]

offering you cancel for any reason, you're doing it within a very short window of booking the trip. And just to be clear on the trip cost side, you can choose the amount you want to cover. Maybe your trip was 50,000, but you only want to cover 20,000 because you know that 30,000 is refundable.

[B]

And so you don't really care about

[A]

protecting that because you know you're going

[B]

to get it back.

[A]

Or you can choose zero, you can get travel insurance and put zero or in some policies, $1. And then you won't really have any trip cancellation or interruption coverage, but you will have all those other coverages. So for me, I went and priced out first one trip, for me, two weeks Europe, no trip cost. And depending on the insurance provider, they either had one policy or sometimes they had three, ranging from kind of basic, mid tier to premium. And the pricing at the basic level was like 20 to 35 dollars and then all the way at the high end was 38 to $123. So for roughly 20 to $100 you can cover a two week trip for all of the things except the cost of the trip. So if you were booking a refundable trip, then this would kind of be everything you need for covering that trip. Now I'm going to get into the credit card perks you might have that will cover all of this. So I'm not saying you need this policy, but before I do that, I just want you to understand how much a trip coverage like this would cost. Now that's per adult, so if there's two of you, you'd pay twice that. But I did notice that anytime I added my children to a trip, it didn't change the price at all. So best I understand, in almost every provider I searched, if not all of them, kids are free even when those kids have associated trip costs with them. Now that was the price with zero trip cost. If you increase that trip cost to $10,000, you're going to add on, like I'd said earlier, 5 to 8% of that $10,000. So you're looking at somewhere around 3 to $700, depending on the tier of coverage you want. And so A family of four going on this trip for two weeks with no trip cost is about 70 to $240, depending on which policy. I think if I Looked at the policy I would probably get, it was probably around $80. So for four people, that's $160. But if you add on $20,000, that's $1,500 more dollars, right? So it's way more expensive to cover the cost of the trip, which makes sense. And then if you want cancel for any reason, it's going to be even more than that. So that's the kind of high level here. Think about a couple hundred dollars to protect yourself on the trip, plus 5 to 10% of the trip cost. To protect the cost. Now, many of these insurance providers also offer an annual option that will cover all your trips. And it typically prices out at around six times the cost of one trip. So if you're taking 20, 30 trips a year annual and you want this policy, I'm not saying you need this

[B]

policy at all, like we'll get to that.

[A]

But if you did want this policy and you were traveling a lot at the point that you're going to take probably somewhere around six trips in the next 12 months, it might make more

[B]

sense to look into the annual policy.

[A]

Also worth knowing is that right now, when I was searching, there were a ton of countries, probably almost every country in the Middle east, including the United Arab Emirates and Israel, and a bunch of countries in Africa like Sudan, Chad, Burkina Faso, they were all excluded. So if you wanted to cover yourself on a trip to Israel, I couldn't find a travel insurance company that would even issue a policy for you. Now there might be one, but the most common ones all said, sorry, we don't issue policies to cover that.

[B]

So that's something to keep in mind.

[A]

So if I run through those insurances, what I want to really flag is which ones you actually probably have coverage for already and which ones are kind of unique. So when it comes to credit cards that you might have that cover a lot of these things, most credit cards on the kind of mid to premium tier, right, we're talking annual fee of 100 or probably in the 400 plus range. I'll call the like Venture X, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Amex Platinum. That'll be like the premium tier of cards. And then below that, the mid tier might be a Chase Sapphire Preferred or a Venture or a City Premiere.

[B]

That's going to be kind of the mid tier.

[A]

Most premium tier cards and some mid tier cards are going to cover your trip cancellation, your trip interruption, your trip delay, your delayed bags, your lost bags, your emergency evacuation, your travel accident, your rental car coverage, and a couple are actually going to Cover medical treatment abroad.

[B]

And when I say premium, it's probably worth clarifying what I mean when I say premium for Amex, that's going to be cards like the Platinum card, the Bonvoy Brilliant. The Delta Reserve or reserve business, the Hilton Aspire on Bank of America, that's the Premium Rewards Elite, that is the Alaska Summit card on Wells Fargo. While it's not actually at premium tier dollars, it has a lot of benefits. And that'd be the Autograph Journey card on Built, that'd be the Built Palladium card on Chase, that would be the Chase Sapphire Reserve. And the Chase have our reserve business on Cap 1, that's the Venture Venture X on US bank, that would be the Altitude Reserve. And so when I say premium, those are the kind of cards I'm talking about.

[A]

Now, how they cover it is where this all changes because it's very, very different. So let's first look at this trip cancellation and interruption insurance, because this is one where buying a policy can actually be quite expensive.

[B]

And so I have actually, whenever I've

[A]

looked into this, never considered paying to cover my trip cost for a couple reasons. One, if you're booking with points and miles, most of these trips are refundable, at least for hotels. Maybe for hotels that might not be true, you know, in the final weeks or days. But for the most part, a lot of the trips we're booking are refundable. But even if they're not, your credit card is going to cover trip cancellation interruption if you have one of these cards.

[B]

And a big takeaway I have here

[A]

is that if you want these coverages, it might be worth using a card even if it earns slightly less points and miles, because it's saving you from having to get a travel insurance policy in the first place. So one thing to keep in mind here is that the trip cancellation and interruption coverage from a lot of credit cards is capped at $10,000. So sometimes it's as low as 3,000, sometimes it goes up to 10,000. But for premium and mid tier cards, 10,000 is the ceiling. Now that's per person.

[B]

So if you have a family of

[A]

four going, you've got up to potentially $40,000, but it is subject to the charges that you put on that card.

[B]

So that is one complication is when

[A]

you're using your credit card for your trip coverage, you need to actually put all the charges on that card. So let's say that you find, wow, I think that my Chase Sapphire reserve card has the best policy and you put all of your hotels on your Hilton or your Bonvoy or your Hyatt card, depending on whether those cards have their own coverage. Which by the way, usually the requirement for a lot of these cards is that you put the flight on your card, you might be out of luck completely. That's a case where I probably haven't done this as diligently at all. But, but if I were booking something non refundable, I'd probably allocate it all to the card with the best benefits.

[B]

The teaser here is that the Chase

[A]

Sapphire Reserve is the card with the best benefits.

[B]

But there's a little bit of, you know, reason to maybe possibly choose another

[A]

card for some of these perks. But overall, you know, that would be kind of like the gold standard for everything. So if I look at cards specifically Chase Sapphire Reserve, Preferred Ink Business preferred, up to $10,000 per trip, up to $20,000 per year. Wells Fargo autograph journey was 15,000, Amex and Chase cards generally across the board for the Premium cards are 10,000 Citi, 5,000, Capital One, bank of America, US bank, two to two and a half thousand dollars.

[B]

So way lower coverage for some of these cards.

[A]

But there are a few other notes and I didn't review every single guide

[B]

to benefits, but I definitely reviewed at

[A]

least a dozen of them.

[B]

And I think it's worth flagging a few things. Now when it comes to booking flights with points and miles, which I know

[A]

lots of us do, the language about whether those are covered, it's very clear

[B]

that you know you're not going to

[A]

get reimbursed for miles that are lost. There are carve outs for, you'll get reimbursed for any award, redeposit fees in some of these languages, but you're definitely not going to get money for the miles back. But in cases where you have to pay for your flights with your card,

[B]

there's language often that's like you have

[A]

to charge the entire cost of the trip on your account in order to get reimbursed. And so if you're trying to protect

[B]

your award flight, there's not really any benefit there.

[A]

But if you're trying to protect non refundable lodging or activities or tours and that kind of stuff, you're going to want to make sure you also put your flights on your card. And if those flights were booked out of the travel portal, usually it seems

[B]

like if it's the travel portal associated

[A]

with the card, you're fine. But in many cases there are programs

[B]

where you can't Put the award taxes and fees on a card and expect

[A]

coverage if those points that you were using weren't accumulated with that card. At least that's how it seems to be.

[B]

Read on bank of America, Capital One, Wells Fargo and Citi.

[A]

However, with Amex and Chase, it feels a little more of a broader interpretation

[B]

of just needing to be whatever total

[A]

costs remain after using those redeemable rewards, which I will interpret as the cost of the taxes and fees.

[B]

So Amex Chase feels really good about

[A]

how the language, the other ones feel good if you're using points from programs that you earned points on with that card.

[B]

But you know, it's insurance. Like no one actually knows what's going to happen until you actually push for this. But you know, I feel better with Amex and Chase when it comes to award flights. Now if you actually look at some of the other carve outs here, Chase, Wells Fargo, Amex and Citi do cover

[A]

your hotels and tours, but bank of

[B]

America and Capital One don't at all. So you know, if you're booking an award flight, you know there's not much

[A]

to cover there at all. Citi and Amex do actually cover replacement

[B]

flights home if something happens mid trip. So that's actually interesting. If you are booking award travel, you know, and you want to be able

[A]

to come home in the middle of

[B]

your trip, they actually have some language to cover that. Some cards actually also cover your award

[A]

redeposit fees if you have to re

[B]

deposit your miles, even if they're not covering your miles. And then when it comes to what situations are covered, there is no cancel

[A]

for any reason here.

[B]

Right? It has to be something that happens that allows them to say, okay, this is a covered reason.

[A]

And there are a lot of reasons

[B]

that are not covered. The only reasons that are covered by every card seem to be sickness or injury to the traveler, immediate family member or financial insolvency of the carrier that the transportation is on. Other than those bank of America and Capital One aren't really going to cover you anywhere. And when I say bank of American Capital One, I'm typically talking about bank of America premium cards, not every bank of American Capital One card because many no annual fee cards on all of

[A]

these issuers aren't going to offer any of these benefits.

[B]

But if we move on and say, well, what is covered by Amex, Citi, Chase and Wells Fargo? And surprisingly the Wells Fargo autograph Journey

[A]

card had the most number of situations that were covered.

[B]

Things like severe weather, travel companions that aren't family members terrorism near your home

[A]

or near your destination.

[B]

Those kinds of things get covered by

[A]

the better policies here.

[B]

Things like jury duty is covered. If you can't reschedule it, military orders, your home is uninhabitable. Like you have fires or floods, your home gets burglarized. You know you have to quarantine.

[A]

A lot of those things are covered

[B]

if you have one of those card issuers. But Capital One and Bank of America way, way, way lower list of things that are covered. So the big question here is for

[A]

trip cancellation and interruption, when do you actually need travel insurance over the coverage

[B]

that you'd get on a premium card?

[A]

And I will say only if you have really high non refundable expenses that you want to cover because they would

[B]

be covered by your card or you

[A]

really just need cancel for any reason. Insurance for whatever reason, you think you

[B]

might have to cancel this and you don't want to be out, you're not going to get that from your card even if it's a lower amount that meets that threshold of the coverage. So that was a big one. Takeaway is that Amex and Chase seem to be the best and then and Citi seems to be behind that. Unless you care about covered activities and then Wells Fargo is great.

[A]

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[B]

Before you travel, there is one other thing that you might want to think about which is not necessarily covered by travel insurance, but I thought I'd mention it and that is price drop. If your flight drops in price, obviously if it's refundable or it's, you know, refundable to credits or you booked with points, you can just go change that and recapture that, usually as a travel credit or refunded points.

[A]

But even if it's not, and you booked through the Capital One travel portal and it was a time where their

[B]

prediction algorithm said now's a good time to book it, they'll pay you up to $50 if the price drops in the next 10 days. So doesn't really fit into insurance, but it kind of fits into this model. So I thought I'd mention it. So let's move on to the things that happen when you're traveling. So trip delay.

[A]

Most premium and mid tier cards are

[B]

going to cover this. They're only going to cover your reasonable expenses. You know, you can't say, oh, I, you know, needed this $300 eye serum and they're going to cover reasonable expenses, but they will cover food or accommodation or possibly, you know, clothes and that kind of stuff. If you don't have them in your carry ons.

[A]

On credit cards, it's almost always on

[B]

premium cards except Wells Fargo. $500 with a six hour threshold and that's per ticket. So if you have four people traveling

[A]

that could be $2,000. Some of the mid premium cards like

[B]

a Chase Sapphire Preferred has this, but on some of those cards it might

[A]

be a 12 hour threshold for a delay. And with trip delay insurance, award flights seem to be covered on almost every platform as long as all or even a portion of the flight was paid for with the card.

[B]

So this is a case where award flights are great. So when would you get travel insurance for this?

[A]

Not really ever. In fact, for a lot of the trip delay coverage on travel insurance you get a hundred to two hundred dollars a day, whereas on almost every credit card policy I found it was 501 time. And so usually you're probably not having a delay that is three to five days.

[B]

And so it's rare that travel insurance

[A]

would actually be better in this case.

[B]

So in this case I would not get travel insurance to cover me for trip delay insurance at all. When it comes to delayed luggage, this

[A]

is pretty rare perk.

[B]

So this is not on most premium

[A]

cards, but it is on premium Chase bank of America cards and the venturex business.

[B]

So this is actually interesting and something worth sharing is that a lot of the reason that these benefits exist is that they're actually not necessarily tied to the issuer as much as they might be tied to the tier of Visa

[A]

or MasterCard you have. So whether it's a Visa Signature or a Visa Infinite or a mastercard World Elite World or World Legends, however, sometime, and I'm not sure when this happened,

[B]

they changed the rules and said you

[A]

don't actually have to offer all the things.

[B]

So while Visa Infinite often includes certain types of benefits, not every Visa Infinite includes them. So that's something where if you have

[A]

a Visa Infinite, you're more likely to

[B]

have better coverage, but not necessarily any coverage at all because the issuers get

[A]

to decide on a per card basis. And one of the weird through lines

[B]

I noticed was that the Venture X

[A]

business seems to have way better coverage than the Venture X on a few of these things.

[B]

And delayed luggage is one of them. Where the Venture X card doesn't have that coverage and the Venture X business does. So this usually on credit cards requires a six hour delay, covers you up to $100 a day, up to a total of $500. On the Venture X business it's three days. So $300. And surprisingly the Chase Sapphire Preferred has

[A]

this, even though it's a very kind

[B]

of rare and only premium card benefit. Now when is travel insurance better for delayed luggage?

[A]

Sometimes it has a higher limit up to 750 dol sometimes the threshold for

[B]

the delay can be as low as three hours. So there are some cases where it's better, but pretty similar. Next, let's talk about when they actually lose your bags.

[A]

This is a common benefit on premium and mid tier cards and it usually covers five to $3,000 as long as the flight was booked on the card and so. On premium cards it's often up to

[B]

$3,000 for some reason in New York it'll cover you only $2,000 and then Citi is actually $5,000. But we'll explain why that is actually not as good as it sounds. Interestingly, a handful of issuers, Wells Fargo, bank of America and Capital One.

[A]

This only kicks in if your trip

[B]

is more than five days long.

[A]

It doesn't have to be five or six days into the trip, but if

[B]

you're taking a three day trip, they

[A]

don't cover you for this. And on almost every issuer, an award

[B]

flight is fine as long as you

[A]

put a portion of the flight on there. Amex for lost and damaged bag explicitly does not cover this.

[B]

If you're on an award ticket, where

[A]

this changes is what's covered for the most part. Electronics and computers and jewelry are either excluded or capped at 500 to $1,000.

[B]

Sporting equipment, again, almost always excluded, except on amex, capped at $1,000 and that's at $1,000. Amex has this high risk bucket that

[A]

covers all of these categories.

[B]

Cell phones, computers, cameras, jewelry, sporting equipment, all that kind of stuff. The city is actually funny because even though they have the highest limit on the city Strata card, it is excluded for jewelry, cameras, laptops and eyeglasses and furs and like all these things that you would want. So yes, they have a high limit, but it only matters if you don't have expensive things. If you have anything that is super expensive or falls under those buckets, their high limit won't matter. So when you care about travel insurance for this, I think if you have expensive equipment, it would make sense to think about travel insurance beyond your credit card.

[A]

But you probably need a special policy

[B]

anyways because most of the expensive equipment

[A]

is not going to be covered by a standard travel insurance policy.

[B]

So I imagine if you're a professional photographer and you travel with thousands of

[A]

dollars of equipment, you probably already think

[B]

about insurance and if not, you probably should about these things.

[A]

Now airlines will also cover these to varying degrees.

[B]

So you also have some protection not just on your credit card, but from an airline. And so that's definitely something to consider as well. That Goes true also for delayed luggage. Sometimes they will cover things when you're delayed also, so you have a double up coverage between your credit card and the airline here. So I don't really feel like these

[A]

are reasons to get travel insurance.

[B]

But let's talk about emergency evacuation because this is one where I went down

[A]

a very, very, very deep rabbit hole

[B]

and I was very surprised with what I found. So I've long known that the Amex

[A]

Platinum is the card to have for emergency evacuation because it covers you for uncapped emergency evacuation and transportation even if you don't pay your travel with your AMEX card.

[B]

And when I say Platinum, I also include the other tier of premium cards, Bonvoy Brilliant Delta Reserve and Biz Hilton Aspire Platinum Business Platinum. Now the requirements are pretty great. You have to be more than 100 miles from home. The trip has to be under 90 days.

[A]

But the main thing here is that Amex controls it all. So you can't just book a chartered

[B]

medevc flight and hope they cover it.

[A]

You need to call Amex and they need to cover all of that transportation.

[B]

That is true for Chase and Bank of America, who also have this for premium cards, though theirs is capped at $100,000.

[A]

And that is true for travel insurance as well. But no matter which policy you have,

[B]

and I'll get to the exceptions, you're

[A]

going to need to let the insurance

[B]

company coordinate all of this.

[A]

And like I said earlier, it is for transporting you from a hospital to a hospital or from medical care to medical care when deemed medically necessary by the insurance company and their team. And so yes, it is great if

[B]

you want this coverage to have a premium AMEX card because you don't even

[A]

have to think about it. You just always have this.

[B]

If something happens in your back pocket,

[A]

it covers you up to $1 million.

[B]

And that's true also for transporting and repatriating any of your remains if you pass away while you're traveling. Chase and bank of America cap the transportation or evacuation at 100,000, but they cap your repatriating of remains at $1,000,

[A]

which I guess maybe would cover you

[B]

if you were cremated abroad, but it wouldn't come close to covering you if you were not. So that almost like not real insurance if they're going to cap that at a thousand dollars. So that's what your card covers. I'm going to come back to some of what your card doesn't cover and

[A]

really dig in here.

[B]

But when I think about emergency evacuation, if you are in a hospital somewhere, and that hospital can't provide the coverage you need, and you want to transfer back to a hospital somewhere else, and

[A]

you need to be doing that, you

[B]

know, not just on a regular flight. It is great that Amex will cover this. It's great that Chase and Bank of America will. I tried to dig into whether $100,000

[A]

of coverage was enough, and it seems

[B]

like most of the time it is enough. There are cases where very far distances with special medical care on that transportation will cost more than that. But for the most part, I think most of the times this is being used, $100,000 is probably enough. But it certainly is a reason that I might just keep one premium Amex card at all times, just in case. Outside of Chase, bank of America and Amex, U.S. bank has coverage for this up to $10,000. City and capital One don't have it at all. So when is travel insurance better here? Sometimes it has higher limits. Sometimes it includes security, evacuation, which I

[A]

think is not covered by any credit card. So that's something to keep in mind if you think that could come up

[B]

while traveling, whether it's security, disaster or something like that. Now, if you have a more serious accident, which is not just a medical injury, and you're going to the hospital,

[A]

but you're actually losing an eyesight, limb,

[B]

something like that, or dying, that's where travel accident insurance comes in.

[A]

And the name of it on your credit card policy might seem like something that it isn't.

[B]

Right.

[A]

When I read, oh, travel accident insurance,

[B]

that sounds like something that would cover me if I have an accident. No, this is an accident, like you

[A]

die, you lose your eyesight or you lose a limb.

[B]

And so that's something to keep in mind. That travel accident is not going to

[A]

cover you on what you might think

[B]

of as an accident. And it's on most premium cards, except Amex and Citi don't offer it at all.

[A]

But the other cards have a huge

[B]

amount of coverage here, somewhere between 100,000

[A]

and a million dollars. And depending on the card and depending on how it works, sometimes the higher limit only applies when it happens on

[B]

your transportation, on a flight or something. And a lower limit exists for kind of 24, 7 on your trip. So the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which I'll kind of say is the gold standard for travel insurance, will cover you 24, 7, $100,000 no matter what happens for these situations. But there is a tiering system here and it's. I don't want to say funny, but it's just like so interesting to read. So on that hundred thousand dollar limit, you're going to be covered 100% if you die. You'll be covered 100%. If you lose your speech or your

[A]

hearing and one hand, foot or eyesight

[B]

or eye, or if you lose both hands, both feet or both eyes sight,

[A]

or if you have any combo of

[B]

two, a sight and an eye, a hand and a foot, they'll cover you a hundred percent. For everything else, if you just have one hand, one foot, one eye, speech or hearing, all independently, you get 75%.

[A]

And if you don't lose your whole hand, but you lose a thumb and an index finger on the same hand,

[B]

they will cover 50%. If you lose any other combination of fingers, you get zero. And so I don't expect this travel accident to happen frequently, but it's nice that it's covered. You do have to book the travel with your card and so that's something

[A]

to keep in mind.

[B]

So when does travel insurance make more sense than what you get from a credit card? They're pretty similar, I would say, you know, there might be a policy somewhere where if you lose one hand they would cover you for the full 100% instead of 75%. Or they might have higher limits on the 24, 7 coverage versus the coverage

[A]

while you're actually traveling on a flight

[B]

or something like that. But in general, I think it's pretty comparable to rely on your travel accident insurance from your credit card.

[A]

Now that covered major accidents and kind

[B]

of a one time payment for it. It covered emergency evacuation. But what about the emergency medical care?

[A]

This is one that is rarely covered

[B]

by credit cards and when it is, it's very weak. So we're talking Chase, Sapphire Reserve and venturex business were the only two cards I found that had emergency medical or dental coverage. They only covered $2,500 with a $50 deductible. So this is one where yes, that might be nice. And in my case of the situation we had in Japan, this would have been perfect if I had put the trip on the card. Now for some of these perks, you only get covered up to the amount you put on the card. So if you put a $20 trip on the card and you have $2,000 in medical bills, they might not cover that. So is travel insurance better? Almost always, in almost every case. And so this is one we're going to really dig into right after the last benefit that you get on a credit card that some travel insurance policies

[A]

cover, usually as a premium thing.

[B]

Which is rental car coverage and most

[A]

premium and many mid kind of tier

[B]

premium cards have primary insurance, which is one of the biggest perks when I'm traveling that I get from these cards because car rental insurance can be really expensive. Now carve out that Amex and Citi

[A]

do not by default give you primary

[B]

car rental coverage from putting something on your credit card. Now it turns out that most U.S. car insurance policies will also cover you when abroad.

[A]

But filing a claim to my US

[B]

car insurance policy feels like a recipe for getting my rates to go up. So I would much rather use an alternative insurance provider. And overseas your US insurance might not cover you at all. Now one thing to be clear about this benefit is for the damage to the vehicle, not liability for damage that you cause. And your primary rental car coverage in the US should cover your liability abroad.

[A]

But if it doesn't or if you don't have a car in the US and you don't have car insurance, then

[B]

you definitely want to make sure you have liability coverage when you're traveling because you are not going to be covered from your credit card. This is for the collision damage waiver, the cdw and the way to activate this benefit is pay for the rental

[A]

car with your credit card and decline

[B]

the collision damage waiver. Now another thing to know, a lot

[A]

of cars, full size vans, trucks, antique cars, exotic luxury cars are often excluded from these policies.

[B]

So this is not for every rental. And so if you're doing something out of the normal, you might want to make sure and look things up. But in general, this benefit is fantastic. It covers you depending on your card for somewhere like 50 to $75,000 on rentals up to 31 days worldwide. There's a lot of insurances that are not applicable or available to New York residents. So again, a lot of the research I did was reading these benefits. Thinking about it from the perspective of living in California, I didn't see a ton of carve outs. But for New York residents, it's worth rereading your guide to benefits because, you know, I have a little subtle note here which is like not available to New York residents. And I didn't dig into it enough to be definitive that it's not available. So if you live in New York, definitely look it up. I would say the Chase Sapphire Reserve, Sapphire Reserve Business and anytime I say premium Chase cards, I am also usually

[A]

including the Ritz card, which has almost

[B]

the same benefits as the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. But it's not a card that's available to new card members. So if you have a Chase Bonvoy

[A]

card, you can product change to the Ritz card.

[B]

And it has some awesome travel coverages, but it's not a card that you can easily get. So that's kind of why I leave it off. Capital One Venture and Venture X also have this benefit primary coverage.

[A]

Home country rentals on Capital One are

[B]

capped at 15 days, but rentals abroad are capped at 31. Then bank of America premium cards built. Chase United cards also have primary coverage. Citi has primary coverage outside of your country of residence, but not within so city. Not great for US Car rentals. And then Amex is the rare one here. They do not have primary rental car

[A]

coverage on any card unless you pay

[B]

for Amex Premium car rental protection. And if the only credit card you have is an Amex, it's not a bad deal, right? It might be 12 to $25 and cover up to 42 consecutive days. So it might also be good if

[A]

you're renting a car from 31 to

[B]

42 days and offers up to $100,000 of coverage, no deductible. It's primary, but you have to pay for it. So it's not that expensive.

[A]

You basically, if I remember correctly, you

[B]

turn it on on your Amex card and then any time you charge a rental car to your Amex card, they also tack on this fee and you're covered. So if you turn it on, you also might want to turn it off so that doesn't happen again if you're not intending to use it. So that's how amex works. But again, get liability coverage or confirm that your U.S. coverage will cover you domestically or abroad with liability. Also, there are a few countries, Australia,

[A]

New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, Jamaica and Israel

[B]

that not saying they're always excluded on

[A]

every policy, but if you're going to

[B]

one of those countries, I'd say look in a little bit because some policies exclude a couple or all of those countries. Is travel insurance better here? Not really. It's usually an extra fee on a travel insurance policy and oftentimes the limits are lower. So this is one where I rely on my credit card for the kind of collision damage on all car rentals. You know, it's interesting we might be going to Italy and renting a car, so I will think about that on our upcoming trip and make sure I use a card that does not exclude Italy for rental car coverage.

[A]

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[B]

So that's what a credit card covers

[A]

for the most part.

[B]

I think it does a good job covering your trip cancellation and interruption, your trip delay, your bags getting lost or delayed and most kind of medical emergency, evacuation and travel accidents and rental cars. That's what it covers.

[A]

Well I think on the emergency medical

[B]

was the one thing that it does

[A]

cover on a couple cards.

[B]

And again my big takeaway here is if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve or I guess a Venture X business, you're probably going to have the best coverage. Or the Ritz card as I mentioned. And then if you have a premium card from other issuers, you'll probably have decent coverage. Maybe bank of America might be kind of at the top of the list for some of those things and then other things it's pretty bad. So like you really have to dig into this. But. But this is a strong case for anyone who cares about these kind of insurances to have the Chase Sapphire Reserve or have the Venture X business in your wallet. But I would say the Chase Sapphire Reserve going forward is kind of the card I will use to book things where I want travel insurance. So it might not be a trip I'm taking to LA tomorrow, it might not matter, but it will Definitely be for a big trip if I want to make sure that's covered, which is a bummer because I have a big trip this summer and I did not put the flights on the J Reserve. So that was a bit of a mistake and something that might justify travel insurance for that one trip. But let's talk about what's not covered. And the biggest bucket of things that

[A]

travel insurance will cover, that credit cards will not cover, is your medical care when you're abroad.

[B]

So I think before I talk about that, let's talk about what your actual

[A]

health insurance in the US Might cover when you're abroad.

[B]

Because I was surprised about a few things, including a few things that I tried to research earlier, but not to the extent I did this time that were wrong.

[A]

And most US employer plans and exchange plans will cover you for emergencies abroad.

[B]

Now, a lot of the group plans that you get from a business actually

[A]

also might cover urgent care.

[B]

And one of the best was Blue Cross Blue Shield has this blue Global

[A]

core program where they actually have in

[B]

network doctors and facilities around the world. So right now I'm on a Blue Shield plan, and I'm actually pretty happy about that. I didn't think about that in the moment when we had to go to a hospital for my daughter last month in Japan, and fortunately it wasn't that expensive. And I think that is a theme here, which is if you're used to how much it costs to go to a hospital in the US you might be wildly surprised that instead of spending $20,000, you can spend hundreds of dollars abroad. So that's great if you're in a situation and didn't have coverage. But it turns out that most U.S.

[A]

policies will cover you abroad, however, only for emergencies or sometimes for urgent care.

[B]

And surprisingly, everywhere I read it said all of these things will be treated out of network if you're abroad. And that is why I never thought to file a claim for our Japanese situation. However, I will give an update on the future if I file this claim and find out what happens.

[A]

But from what I've read and understood, emergencies actually need to be held to

[B]

the in network deductible. And so I haven't tested this on international emergencies and I haven't found anyone that's actually written on this. So if you have experience, let me know. But it seems like even though they kind of say when you're abroad that's out of network, the in network deductible might apply because it's an emergency. And for the same reason that if you Go to an out of network hospital in the US you're in network deductible might also apply or you're in network out of pocket max and that kind of stuff. Again, I'm not, you know, the insurance policy here. So if I get something off, my apologies, but don't hold me to it. But I did do, I don't know, probably 10, 20, 30 hours of research over the past week on these topics, reading tons of documents and logging into old medical insurance providers to see if I could find access to their documents and whatnot. And so I went pretty deep. Now it's almost always pay up front and get reimbursed. It's almost always never going to cover your evacuation or transportation, but it is often going to cover your emergencies. And you know, Kaiser for example, which is kind of a network that I think anyone who's used Kaiser knows is usually not covering out of network stuff. It says on their website, Kaiser Permanente plans cover urgent and emergency care anywhere in the world with reimbursement mechanics abroad. Now it separately warns something that is true for all of your kind of U.S. medical care that post stabilization care and transportation after your visit and outpatient follow ups are not emergency care. So if you get stitches abroad and need to get them removed, you know, if you went to the ER and you got those stitches that might be

[A]

covered, but getting them removed probably wouldn't

[B]

be because that's not an emergency situation. And so that's kind of what happens with employer coverage. For non employer coverage, you know, plans you got on the exchange, it's often emergency only. But it seems like all of those plans still have that coverage. When it comes to other plans like health ministries, health sharing, medical research, it is much harder to get a definitive answer. I did read on the Christian Health Care Ministries website that if you need medical care on a vacation abroad, medical expenses for foreign health care providers will be authorized in accordance with the CHM guidelines. Those medical bills need to be translated and converted to US currency and then emergency transportation is not. But it says they will cover medical bills from foreign providers when you're traveling, but not for medical tourism, which kind of makes sense. And so that's not to say all of them will. And in general I've found that there are more exclusions and restrictions on these plans than there are on exchange and ACA kind of mandated plans and ERISA plans for from employers. So I would say definitely something that you would want to look into if you didn't have a major plan. And then the other One is Medicare. So, interestingly, Medicare has zero coverage abroad unless you have Medicare Advantage or supplemental Medicare plans or Medigap plans. I looked into the Plan G, which is kind of the gold standard of supplemental Medicare Medigap plan. I haven't ever really looked into Medicare, so this is kind of a fun process. I was texting my parents, like, hey, what do you guys have? Do you have something?

[A]

My mom's like, we have Plan G.

[B]

Plan G covers you while you're traveling abroad for emergencies. Covers 80% of the coverage. So you have a 20% coinsurance and there's a $250 deductible, but the cap is only 50k. There are also these plans called Medicare Advantage, and those often cap at somewhere around 25k if they have coverage at all. And so that is definitely something to keep in mind. I think that, you know, I feel reasonably good that if some extremely expensive medical situation happened abroad and it was an emergency, I would be covered by my US Health insurance. I might have to pay for it out of pocket. But I don't worry anymore about needing coverage for emergencies. And if you had Medicare and you had that coverage, you probably don't have to worry beyond $50,000. But that kind of makes me a little nervous. I don't know how much things cost in every country, and I know that it's unlikely they'll cost more than they do in the US But I think there are circumstances where I can imagine in almost every country in the world, you could need more than $50,000 of medical treatment. And so that cap on the Medicare coverage has me a little worried that that would not be enough. Now, what about non emergency medical? You know, your kid has an ear infection or a high fever and you want to go see someone, but you're not going to the hospital, or you sprained your ankle and maybe a few days later you're like, maybe I should go get an X ray. Or maybe you have like a stomach bug and you need a prescription, you cracked a tooth. That kind of stuff is definitely not covered by your health insurance abroad, unless maybe you can qualify it under urgent care, or you're part of the Blue Cross Blue Shield network that has in network coverage abroad. Otherwise, that's the kind of stuff that some travel insurance policies will actually cover when you're abroad. Non emergency medical stuff. In fact, when I was in Syria, I thought I had a gallstone, which is like a kidney stone, in your gallbladder. Like, I was convinced that the symptoms and the limited research I was doing on the Internet told me that was what I have. And we took a cab, we crossed the border over to Lebanon, I went to a hospital, I got it checked out and it cost hundreds of dollars but I can't remember how much. I did not have a gallstone and at the time we did have a travel insurance policy. This was gosh, 15 years ago and I remember that being covered. So that's a good example of some non emergency medical situation. Now my experience abroad in probably three or four times it's happened is that the cost of non emergency medical abroad, go see a doctor, get a prescription, get something checked out is very, very low. So not to say that for some people getting a 300, $400 extra bill is not a big deal, but you've got to pay for medical insurance to cover it. And so yes, you could pay $100 to cover that. If I look at okay, sometimes I'll have a $600 cost and many times I won't. So the average cost of that might be $30 over all the trips I take. That's on where for me personally I might be willing to self insure. But one thing I did find is that Visa, if you have a Visa Infinite or Visa signature card, they advertise a benefit that I've never heard anyone talk about but on the website it says there is a nurse advice line

[A]

and an online medic line where you

[B]

get 24,7 access to virtual consultations with doctors and nurses for general symptoms, medical questions, non urgent cases without having to go to a hospital. So that could be a way to access a doctor for something non emergency outside of the US if you don't have any other methods of doing that. So that's medical abroad. And so when would I think about travel insurance here it's if I am worried about those non emergency medical situations. There's one I didn't mention yet which is around pregnancy and this is one where everywhere I was searching kind of just flagged that if you're traveling and you're pregnant, just get a medical insurance policy because you just don't know. There might be situations that aren't ER related but you want to go get things checked out and they could be complicated and they could be expensive. It was a little unclear what would happen if you had a child while you were abroad and that child needed to be in the NICU or something. And so just felt like if you have a health situation already, a pre existing condition, a pregnancy that you want to make sure is protected in case something goes Wrong. That's a circumstance where I would look into a policy that covered it. But if that's not the case, I feel like, you know, you are covered probably for emergencies, you are probably covered for transportation if you need to go from one hospital to another and it's necessary. But where it's not covered is if you want to go from one facility to another and it's not required. And there are very specific insurance policies that cover exactly that situation. And I know this because back when the pandemic was happening, we were going to Mexico. My dad, who was a bit immunocompromised, was worried that if he got Covid, he would need to be at a hospital on a ventilator in Mexico and would not want to be there as much as he would want to be at his regular hospital at ucsf. And so he was looking into medical evacuation insurance and unless it was medically necessary to be in the us, it was not covered. However, there were a handful of companies that, even if it wasn't medically necessary, would still let you choose where you wanted to have your medical treatment. And so this is an area where

[A]

without that insurance, I have not found

[B]

any standard travel policy or credit card that will let you transport to the

[A]

hospital of your choice for medical treatment. And so this is an interesting one

[B]

because there are probably lots of cases where you might have something go wrong and it's not so urgent that it needs to be taken care of right now. Right. Like if you got into a major car accident, you wouldn't be thinking, gosh, my limbs need to be attached, but maybe I should call amex and see if they could transport me, you know, across the world to get this fixed. But there are probably plenty of circumstances where something could happen and, you know, they're like, ah, we're going to need to do something about this in the next few days. And you might think, gosh, I'd really rather do this at home, but where you are can do it. You know, it's a capable facility. So Amex or your travel insurance isn't going to cover it. And so these are companies like Medjet, Airmed, Kovac, Global Rescue, and for somewhere around $315 for one person to $435 for a family. And that's an annual price you can cover yourself for. Kind of hospital of choice, emergency evacuation or all emergency evacuation, right on the low end. I think it was around $265. Some of these companies are as much as $600 for one person, but that's probably that last one is one that I probably would exclude. But the tried and true here seems to be medjet is kind of the one that everyone seems to talk most highly about. And Global Rescue. And they're in the three to 400 for a person and four to $700 for a family. And then a lot of these companies also offer a security premium here, which is will also evacuate you if there's a security situation. And that usually costs 1 1/2 to 2x the price. So on Medjed, if it's $435 for your family, it might be close to 6 or $700 if you want to include the security evacuation. So that is the premium for I want to be able to be evacuated to my hospital of choice, which is one where, if that's important to you, that is coverage you need to get. And then the other one, which is interesting. As I was reviewing these, I realized medical evacuation doesn't mean come get me where I am. It's usually transport me from hospital. Hospital. If you want to be picked up where you are, if you're in the middle of nowhere and you don't want to rely on just calling whatever emergency number there is, which is probably what

[A]

you'd want to do, right?

[B]

If you're in an emergency, you know, if you were on a safari in Africa, the, the tour operator you're with probably has a phone number of someone that can do some kind of evacuation if needed. But let's say you're doing something that's different. There are specialty medical insurances that will cover you for really, really reasonable costs for above and beyond that. And so, for example, the American Alpine Club has a policy that you can get for $250 a person or $100 a person per year that will cover you for kind of search and rescue. Redpoint was another company that offered this kind of search and rescue. Garmin actually has their own insurance policy for this. So if you have one of their, you know, GPS devices, there's actually a way that you could say, hey, come

[A]

get me, I'm here.

[B]

And Global Rescue, which I mentioned above, for evacuation, one of the reasons it's a little bit more expensive than a policy like medjet is that they also include that kind of search and rescue or field rescue component.

[A]

And so if I were going on

[B]

some crazy hike in the middle of nowhere, high altitude, all that kind of stuff, like, I would definitely be looking at one of these policies because the cost, I imagine to be transported from wherever you are to a hospital is almost never going to be covered by emergency evacuation insurance. Similarly, if you're doing something like a lot of scuba diving, you would probably want coverage for specific scenarios. And so Dan, the Divers Alert Network has a membership that includes this. So it's very reasonably priced, 40 to $75 a year. And I'm putting up with that covers. And that includes some emergency evacuation, some repatriation, but it's specifically focused around diving. And so one of the scenarios you might be in if you're scuba diving is needing to get to a recompression chamber. Now, I don't know if that's treated as an emergency, but getting from a dive site, from a dive boat, from the shore to that recompression chamber, all these other emergency evacuation policies typically require you to be transported under the kind of supervision of an attending doctor at a hospital. I don't think anyone that scuba diving that wants to get to a recompression chamber wants to make a stop at a hospital and then call AMEX to coordinate this. And so if I were doing any kind of serious dive trip, 40 to $75 a year to have a diving focused membership that would cover you in circumstances like that seems like a no brainer for anyone who knows how much it costs to go scuba diving. It, you know, probably a rounding error on a dive trip. So that's definitely something I would look at. So let me try to wrap this up and tie it up because I want to leave you with some very practical and tactical ways to think about this. So obviously, if you don't have a premium credit card that has travel insurance, that's a great reason to get travel

[A]

insurance, if only for a few reasons

[B]

like medical evacuation or things where, you know, you don't really care about the cost of the trip. Maybe you booked it all on points and miles, it's all refundable. Maybe you're going to stay with family so there's not really any costs once you're there. Maybe you always carry on your bag so you're not too worried about them getting lost. But you never know what's going to happen when you're abroad. And so having something that will cover you if you need to be transported to a facility, that's not where you are, right. If you're going on a trip and you're going to London, you're probably fine. But if you're going on a trip and you're going to the middle of Africa or the middle somewhere in Southeast Asia, maybe that's one where that Emergency evacuation is important. So I would say if you are traveling and you want some amount of coverage and you don't have a premium credit card that covers this, that's a great reason to get travel insurance. If you do have a premium credit card, but you're going on an expensive trip or you really just need that protection for cancel for any reason, maybe you're the kind of person whose work is constantly changing your travel plans and it's just not worth the risk of losing a cost on a really expensive trip. This is something I would think about especially for really expensive trips like, you know, let's say you're going on a tour of the Galapagos and you know, you don't want to be in a situation where your flight to the Galapagos is canceled and now you miss out on a very expensive chartered boat. Like those kinds of things are where I would definitely look at travel insurance. Or if you're doing anything kind of very unique that you know is off the beaten path, off the grid, that's kind of something that would be a trigger for me to look into travel insurance for travel reasons. Now, for medical reasons, there's a handful of other reasons. If you have a health insurance policy that won't cover you when you're abroad, maybe you just have basic Medicare. Maybe you have one of these health sharing plans or, you know, one of these medical research plans that you can get from companies like lifx. I would really want to make sure that I have coverage there to be abroad. Or maybe you even have that Medigap Medicare supplemental insurance, but you know, it's capped at $50,000 and you know how expensive medical emergencies can be. That's a great reason to look into getting medical insurance for traveling abroad. Or maybe you have a really high deductible and you don't want to have to pay fully out of pocket. But again, if that's the case, you take that same risk at home. So I assume you would also be willing to take that same risk abroad. If you have any kind of very specific medical situations where you have really strong opinions about who sees you and how you're treated. That could be another reason if you're worried about medical treatment that's not an emergency or medical treatment after an emergency. The way a lot of these emergency medical plans are written in your health insurance is like they will kick in up until you're discharged. So if you need to stay in the hospital for weeks, you know, that seems to still fall for most plans under an emergency. But if you get discharged, you need to kind of regularly come back. That wouldn't be covered. So that's one. If you want to evacuate to a hospital of your own choice, that would be a great reason to get a policy. And then if you have any of these specialty situations, that would also be another good reason. Or like I said, not just specialty, like you're going mountaineering or diving, but you have a special health condition or you're pregnant or something like that. And if you look at those policies, I would say if you're going four or five, six trips a year or more, look at whether it makes sense to get something annual. And I kind of put the buckets of these into you either are going to get a travel insurance policy or you're going to get a specialist policy or you're going to kind of get hospital of your own choice evacuation insurance. Those are kind of the three buckets I found. And only the travel insurance is the one that you think about annual or per trip. You can get the evacuation or the kind of diving, mountaineering, search and rescue policies on an annual basis for relatively inexpensive. And so on one hand I'm like, travel insurance, I don't feel like I actually need it with everything I have right now. Right. Like there isn't a thing that a travel insurance policy won't cover that I'm really that worried about because I have health insurance that will cover me abroad. I have good, good credit cards that cover almost all of these things at similar levels. And the only exception to that would be if we were doing one of these kind of rare trips, if we were going to Antarctica or if we were going to the Galapagos or something where we just had a very expensive five or six figure trip. Again, say that out loud. I can't even imagine taking a six figure trip. But if we had a really expensive trip, that's something where I'd probably look into having more coverage because I know my current cards are not going to cover that. But the ones that are actually probably more interesting to me are around the if we were off the grid wanting to get some specialty coverage or scuba diving or whether you want to be treated at your hospital of choosing. And I think I would probably base that more on where we were going. You know, I'd feel reasonably confident if I were going to, you know, a very developed country being able to get to a really great medical facility, even if it's not the one near my home. But if I were going somewhere where there might be facilities that insurance adjuster might say, oh, this is. This is suitable. And I might disagree. That might be a year to get a membership with medjed or Global Rescue or something like that. When it comes to which travel insurance to get, if you're getting the kind of travel insurance side of things, there are so many companies out there. I think if you're looking for something that also includes that field rescue, search and recovery, then I would probably look at things like Redpoint or Ripcord. If you're not, then there are so many, I don't even know where to start recommending. In my research, I found good things about Blue Cross Blue Shield. I found good things about Berkshire Hathaway, about Allianz Travel Guard World Nomads. Like there are a lot. There's a company called Square Mouth that's an aggregator. At the end of the day, there's really two things that I would consider picking a travel insurance policy. One is what is covered and for that I think it's pretty easy to download the policies before you sign up and like really understand what's covered. And then the second is what's the experience working with these companies? And you go look on Better Business Bureau or trustpilot and try to find reviews and ratings. That would be the other factor if it were me. The price for these policies, if you're not covering the trip cost is in the hundreds of dollars for a trip. And so if you're going to get one of these policies, I would just try to find a provider that you feel really good about. And for me it would be probably focused more on the medical side of things and other things. So like knowing the network of Blue Cross Blue Shield, their travel insurance policies kind of seem interesting. I've heard good feedback of Allianz, so that probably be a second place to work. This company called Travel Insured, which I've heard a bunch of people talk about and say they've had good experiences. So a lot of options I'll link to the ones I can find that I've already found that I think are worth sharing in the show notes. But at the end of the day it might need to be a shop around situation and a read review situation. So that's kind of it. Like, do you need travel insurance? Probably not. Will you find podcasts and people who sell travel insurance that tell you you do? Y but I think my plan going forward is put all travel costs that I want travel insurance for on a Chase Sapphire reserve card and that solves almost everything and get evacuation or specialist coverage if I'm going to a place where I feel like that year that's something I'd want. But an interesting thing is to learn all this. I read so many of the guides to benefits for credit cards, so many of them, and I realized that since I put an episode out three years ago about all the benefits on credit cards, a lot has changed. And there were so many different new perks. Things like roadside assistance, international data for free. For most of the people listening to this, the way cell phone coverage works, different meal and grocery delivery benefits, we're not talking about the big splashy credits that you see, like a hundred dollars here, $200 here. I'm talking about a lot of the stuff that you don't know about that maybe is tied to the issuer like Visa or MasterCard. So I learned a lot of that. So much so that I'm going to do an episode next week going through all of that. So it'll be the full deep dive on all the hidden benefits of your credit card that you're probably not aware of, at least some of. Depending on who you are, you might not be aware of most of them or some of them, or a couple of them. But I'm pretty sure that anyone that has a credit card will get value out of that episode next week. So that is it for this week. Email is podcastallthehacks.com I will see you next week.

[C]

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