A travel insurance farce

Homogenised insurance policies can be a real pain when you don't fit a standard profile. .

Yet another computer crash has taken me off air these past three weeks. I was away for one of them, but only just. I would be interested to know if others have shared my nightmares with medical travel insurance.

Laws Junior was to be married in Houston, Texas. His brother was to be his best man, and I was to represent the wider family. But, of course, only a mug risks the trip without the appropriate insurance.

As it happened, I had fainted a few weeks back, and because I have a bit of heart history the GP had recommended that I should have a 24 hour ECG. With that test pending, I soon found that I couldn’t get any cover at any price. Anyway, the surgery’s ECG gizmo, which looked like something out of the ‘fifties, failed to function. Thus, I was despatched to a cardiologist, who managed to get two lots of tests organised in two days, and signed me off.

I obtained the cover in the end, but it cost about the same as the return ticket. Along the way, I must have done half a dozen call centre interviews. I have to admit that I was irritated by the question: “can you walk 200 yards on the flat without losing your breath? As it happens, I play golf on a fiendishly hilly course, and walk for an hour and a half every day with our faithful hound.

But what was most infuriating was that none of the underwriting algorithms seemed able to cope with the fact that I had unpleasantly high blood pressure in the year 2000, and was told then that if I couldn’t get it down I would have to have medication. So I got it down and was never prescribed medication. Along came the policy schedule, which stated that I had taken medication for high blood pressure. So I ‘phoned up to correct the simple error. The entire interview had to be gone through all over again because apparently that is what the FSA requires. And at the end of it all the insurer wanted another £20. I paid up because I had no choice.

There were no questions about family history. There were no questions about height and weight. So I reckon if I had been a 30 stone non-smoking alcoholic, with a father and three siblings all of whom had died of heart attacks before the age of 30, I would have got the cover on the cheap.

Maybe it is just a racket, like PPI. Has anyone out there had similar problems?

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