One traveler recently found her Vail, Colorado trip with family significantly derailed due to a scratched cornea. A trip to the emergency room and she was required to lie quietly and rest with a patch over her injured eye. Luckily, she purchased travel insurance and her trip to the ER didn’t cost her a bundle.
A growing number of families are looking at travel differently these days. Given the recent economy, many families have had to eliminate travel in favor of ‘staycations’ at home. Sharply rising gas prices have done little to ease the pain or allow people to substitute road trips for vacations involving air travel.
Even if you are traveling in the U.S. and have a health plan, you’re likely traveling out of your health insurance network area. So even a minor injury or illness can run a small fortune in costs you weren’t planning to spend on your vacation.
According to the U.S. Travel Insurance Association (USTIA), more than 120 million people insured themselves against travel-related losses last year. This number is up a whopping 35% over past years. It’s easy to see why as family budgets get tighter, jobs are scarce, and the cost of just about everything is rising. Travel insurance isn’t free, but it’s helped a number of travelers defray what would otherwise be very high and unexpected expenses resulting from a wide variety of sticky and uncomfortable situations.
