Travel insurance

For the upcoming trip to Australia, my sister advised me to get travel insurance to cover for hospitalisation due to Covid-19 infection. Hospital accommodation for non-Australia residents costs more than AUD 2,000 in normal ward and more than AUD 5,000 in critical care unit ward....per day!

I normally don't buy travel insurance because I have medical insurance that also covers me when I'm overseas (for not more than 90 days for any one trip). However, recently I checked my policy document again and realised that the insurer would reimburse me in accordance with reasonable and customary charges. Basically, they would reimburse me for covered medical treatment as though it's treated in Malaysia. So, room & board charge would be like RM 250 a day. It's no way near the cost in Australia!

After a quick research, I settled on Etiqa Tripcare 360, chiefly due to its cashless feature. I chose the lowest option as its RM 100k cover for hospitalisation should be more than enough. I bypassed the option to add in Covid-19 coverage as I thought its increase of hospitalisation cover to RM 300k was excessive. However, after I purchased, I discovered, in its contract, that the normal travel insurance policy excludes medical treatment due to "communicable and/or contagious disease"! That explains why the need for such rider and why it's expensive i.e. nearly double the basic policy's premium.

So I called Etiqa to add on the rider but unfortunately it couldn't be done. I had to cancel the policy for a full refund and then purchased another one with the Covid-19 rider. Fortunately, there was no problem in doing that. Phew!

Well, I learned something new from this experience. Hopefully I won't need to trigger the use of this insurance.

Comments

William said…
Lucky can cancel without penalty
Jaded Jeremy said…
William,
Ya, requested it on the same day of purchase and so well within the free-look period. Iirc all insurance contracts have free-look period. Think it's 14 days.

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