by KYW's Salil Gutt
When you travel your health insurance does not necessarily travel with you.
Most people do no give any thought to unexpected illness or injury while traveling. Here's what to know.
Your health insurance will cover you if you travel in the U .S. or abroad but it won't offer complete coverage. For instance, some policies pay just 80% of costs if you meet with a doctor who is not pre-approved. Also some PPO's and high deductible plans have reimbursement rates of 50% of costs if you get treatment out of network. At an extreme some policies will only cover you if first go to an emergency room, not just to the doctor.
The solution to this is to purchase travel medical insurance particularly if you're traveling overseas. Such policies also tag on trip cancellation and delay insurance and are automatically offered by the travel web site for an additional fee.
Alternatively, you can compare prices on the website insuremytrip.com.
One important point. Be sure your policy will cover emergency evacuation to a hospital near your home. This could easily run into six figures if you are in a remote area.
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