Sara Baker, a young woman from the UK, recently broke her back snowboarding in Canada.

Baker lost control in Whistler resort and needed immediate surgery to repair crushed vertebrae and a nearly severed spine. Rescuers had to land on a glacier to rescue her. According to current media reports, she has a good chance of walking again but she’s facing months of rehabilitation.

Baker thought she had annual travel insurance, but unfortunately her policy had recently expired. It’s an easy mistake to make.

Now, her family and friends are trying to raise the funds necessary to get her home in a specially adapted air ambulance – at a reported cost of £50,000 (close to $80,000).

Here at Travel Insurance Review, we hate hearing stories like this because the tragedy of a travel accident is horrifying enough without adding a financial burden that can take years – even decades – to recover from as this American couple traveling in Costa Rica recently discovered.

It’s vital for citizens of all countries to have travel insurance and be sure it’s valid before traveling.  Emergency medical evacuation coverage provides for medically necessary evacuations to a medical facility, medically equipped flights home, and even the repatriation of mortal remains. With many travel insurance plans, this coverage will also pay to have a friend or family member brought to your bedside if you are hospitalized a certain number of days (usually 7).

Read all about emergency evacuation and repatriation coverage, including a list of plans and policy limits.

The Minnesota Department of Commerce has announced that over 80,000 travelers will receive refunds for travel insurance policies they were automatically enrolled in when purchasing airfare on Travelocity.com.

‘Opt-out’ travel insurance is a bad practice

As we have written before, buying travel insurance through your booking site is not the best idea.

However, the practice of automatically adding travel insurance to your booking and forcing you to ‘opt-out’ by un-clicking a box is deceitful and misleading.

True, if you read every single word on the page you will fully understand what is included and what you are paying for. But expecting travelers to scour the page looking for check boxes so they aren’t unknowingly opting into something is absurd.

Booking sites these days have so many up-sells, add-ons, options, and newsletters that the checkout process has become a field of landmines.

Starting Jan. 24, 2012 the law has changed

Last year, the Department of Transportation released a final version of their Passenger Protections and the rules went into effect last month.

As a part to the concept of full fare disclosure, the new rules prohibit “opt out” provisions in any advertising. This includes the sales of travel insurance.

Starting 1/24/2012, booking sites should not be automatically including travel insurance with any purchases.

Buy your travel insurance separately

I recommend buying travel insurance separately from your airfare or cruise tickets.

Why?

When you are booking your flight or cruise, you are not in the insurance mindset.

You are thinking about departure days, arrival times, connections, getting the best fare, (and avoiding check boxes that sign you up for things you don’t want).

You are less likely to make in informed purchase when your simply click a checkbox. You won’t fully understand what you are buying and this can lead to misunderstandings.

Instead, book your trip or cruise, then research and purchase travel insurance from a comparison site or direct from the company.

This will give you time to make an informed decision and be confident in your travel insurance purchase.

As you might have expected, the cruise industry has re-examined cruise ship safety drills, also called muster drills, after the Costa Concordia tragedy which resulted in 17 known deaths.

In response to the disaster, a Cruise Industry Operational Safety Review was launched to assess the effectiveness of safety procedures on cruise ships. The key components of the review included an examination of critical human errors with the intent to identify policy changes and make recommendations.

One of the key complaints of passengers on the Costa Concordia was that the muster drill had not occurred prior to the accident. Those unfamiliar with the ship were not aware of proper procedures nor which lifeboat they should go to in order to abandon the ship.

Prior to this accident, cruise ships were required to hold a muster drill within 24 hours of embarking (the Costa Concordia accident happened within this time frame). In response to this disaster, muster drills will be required before the ship sets sail to ensure that all passengers are aware of emergency procedures before the ship leaves the dock.

The new rules about holding safety drills prior to leaving the dock are effective immediately.

Related

See the final moments of the Costa Concordia infographic.

See our post on how one passenger was left on the dock for failing to attend a muster drill.

Celebrating a birthday and their wedding anniversary, Ron and Elissa Merritt flew from Minneapolis last week to Costa Rica for a winter getaway. The couple took an ATV trip into the scenic mountains when Elissa lost control of her vehicle and plunged down a steep cliff burying her in an avalanche of dirt and rocks.

At a San Jose hospital, administrators told Ron he would have to pay cash for her care, so he handed over his credit card for the first $5,000. The following morning, his card was charged more and the bill is rising each day.

Family back home have started a benefit to raise funds to get Elissa back to America, where the couple’s health insurance can defray the costs, but a medical evacuation is predicted to take up to $30,000 and Elissa cannot travel by commercial airlines as it would be medically unsafe.

It is crucial for travelers leaving their home country to understand that your health insurance does not extend beyond the borders – this includes Medicare and Medicaid as well. In some cases, U.S. health insurance companies will reimburse travelers for out-of-network costs out of country, but it depends entirely on the insurance company policy rules.

Our hearts go out to Ron and Melissa and their worried families and we wish the best for Melissa’s condition and recovery.

Why Travel Insurance Really is Cheap

We don’t know Ron or Elissa’s ages, or whether they have pre-existing medical conditions, but as an example, we ran some basic trip details through our travel insurance comparison tool to get an idea what travel insurance would have cost a similar couple.

Using these trip details:

• 2 travelers ages 32 and 37
• going from Minnesota to Costa Rica
• 5 days
• NO cancellation coverage
• hazardous sports coverage

We got a number of policies from a several companies. We’re showing you just a few below:

Note that two of these plans have as much as $50,000 in emergency medical (which is sounds like Elissa may need), and all have medical evacuation coverage from $300,000-$500,000. When you consider the bills, fear, and uncertainty Ron and Elissa are facing right now, the cost of even the highest of these three plans is very, very cheap indeed. Plus, travel insurance plans come with 24/7 emergency travel assistance representatives, many of whom will arrange for payments to be made directly to the hospital, and all will coordinate and pay for a medical evacuation back home.

Again, we sincerely hope that this couple is able to get safely home soon.

After Costa Concordia passengers claimed that the ship set sail without a muster drill and the tragic sinking disaster occurred before a muster drill had been implemented, are cruise lines laying down a hard line for muster drill attendance?

Cruise captains have begun booting passengers off the cruise ships when they fail to comply during mandatory safety drills.

Anyone who has been on a cruise is familiar with this temporary break in the vacation fun when the bars are closed and passengers are ordered to gather at their assigned meeting places. The muster drill is a required emergency practice session in which passengers are informed of what to do in an emergency, and they practice donning life jackets.

In the wake of the Costa Concordia sinking, cruise lines are examining their procedures and tightening where they may have previously been lax. It is likely that failure to check in at the muster drills in the future may prompt increased passenger action and it’s likely well within the cruise line’s rights. The cruise contract typically has language stating that passengers can be denied transportation either before or during a cruise in situations where they fail to abide by the rules of the ship.

FYI: We can’t find anything in the travel insurance policies we read that indicate travel insurance would pay to get this passenger back home, but the travel assistance services teams might be able to help him arrange for a flight home.

The second part of the Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations have gone into effect and we’re wondering if this will make at least the air travel portion of the travel experience any more tolerable?

After six months to allow the online travel agencies (those companies like Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak, Travelocity and others) to upgrade their computer systems, they are not required to disclose ALL FEES and TAXES upfront when advertising an airfare. This includes baggage fee disclosures to inform passengers right away what extra fees they may expect to pay for checking their luggage.

Another rule allows travelers to change their minds: everyone gets a 24-hour period to do the following:

• put an airfare on hold before clicking the buy button
• cancel a ticket for a full refund without a penalty
• avoid a price increase by airlines, tour operators, and cruise lines (excepting fully disclosed tax increases)

This means, travelers will be able to lock in an airfare and be assured that it won’t increase while they are checking their schedule, checking with family, etc. Travelers can also cancel a ticket when they’ve made a mistake.

A final rule ensures that travelers are informed of flight delays and cancellations because the airlines have to make that announcement within 30 minutes of pulling or delaying a flight.

Let’s hope all of these changes mean the skies get a little friendlier again.

Travelers may finally get some relief from the current ban on liquid amounts over 3.4 oz/100 ml. A new British scanner called the INSIGHT 100 screens bottles of plastic and glass and detects explosives. The system is currently in trial in several European airports.

The liquid restrictions were introduced following a failed attempt by terrorists in 2006 to bring down several airlines departing London for North America. The terrorists intended to use liquid explosives carried onto the aircraft.

This new scanner uses a technology called Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy, or SORS. It uses particles of light to identify the molecules inside containers. Ultimately, the technology is hoped to be used to diagnose diseases in a non invasive way and be used to analyze counterfeit drugs and powders.

Either way, if this technology proves successfully, we’ll all be able to start taking our shampoo, conditioner, lotions, and water bottles on the planes again. Bottles of water, cosmetics, and perfumes may be taken through airport security as early as 2013.

Troy Tiburcy was on holiday in Thailand after Christmas when he apparently had a SCUBA diving accident and suffered decompression sickness. Since the accident, he has been in a Bangkok hospital and is being treated for severe neurological issues, but he is not well enough to fly home.

Unfortunately, Troy did not have travel insurance, so there are no ready funds or aid to pay for and coordinate an evacuation to get him home to his family.

In turn, his family had to pool their resources to fly Tiburcy’s mother to the hospital so he would have someone he knew with him. The medical bills are said to be about $1,600 a day and mounting. So far, the Australian Embassy has been able to provide a translator but no transportation or financial aid.

This dreadful situation, one the family calls a “living nightmare” underscores one truth: travel insurance with adequate medical coverage and coverage for a medical evacuation is absolutely essential for trips like these. Our hearts go out to the Tiburcy family and we urge travelers – especially those who plan to engage in adventurous activities like SCUBA diving – to research and purchase travel insurance.

With proper travel insurance, an injured traveler can have:

• funds for emergency medical care
• assistance in getting a friend or family member to their bedside
• a coordinated medical evacuation to a hospital back home
• someone to keep in touch with the traveler and relay messages back home to family, friends, and business partners