Travel Insurance

Are you planning for a trip abroad, but is afraid of the unforeseen and unpredicted events that may take place during the trip, like fight cancellation, sudden illness or natural catastrophes. A simple fracture or a simple injury can cost you a fortune. Apart from health problems, you may lose an expensive item or your baggage; there may even be flight cancellation. To shield your travel from all these problems and to make your trip more pleasant, you should certainly purchase travel insurance. Travel insurance is an insurance purchased from a company to meet the expenses of a tour or tours taken by an individual either for the whole family or for him individually. Travel insurance covers the cost of personal accident, medical expenses, air ambulance, repatriation costs and all other expense that may arise as a result of loss, damage, injury, delay or inconvenience occurring to the client. This policy covers trip cancellation also.

Travel insurance covers the travel insurance deals for:

Single Trip Travel Insurance
Annual travel insurance
Ski/ winter sports Travel Insurance
Backpackers Travel Insurance
Adventure Travel Insurance
Business Travel Insurance

Single Trip Travel Insurance: It is basically for those who have plans to travel in UK or abroad for once in a year. It is totally flexible and easy to purchase.

Annual Travel Insurance: This type of insurance is sponsored for unlimited trips for a whole year. The couple and the family policies cover all people individually even if they are not traveling together.

Ski / Winter sports Travel Insurance: This type of insurance is provided for winter sports like skiing and snow boarding.

Backpackers Travel Insurance: This type of insurance is perfect for students who are planning long trips abroad or within Europe. The students who are planning to take a gap year can enjoy the full benefits of this policy. Even elder people up to the age of 45 can avail this insurance. This is basically the insurance given while one is on a business trip.

Adventurous Travel Insurance: If one needs more than sitting in the beach for hours, then go for an adventurous travel abroad. But before that, insure yourself with adventurous travel insurance.

There are certain pre-conditions that need to be fulfilled before your insurance company gives you travel insurance. To avail this insurance policy, one has to be a resident of UK, below the age of 70, should not be instructed by any doctor or medical supervisor not to travel in the next 12 months. It is a very important task on your part to check all the details of the insurance company before buying travel insurance. Almost all the insurance companies now have websites of their own. So it is easier to shop around for you to search for the right insurance plan.

Travel Insurance includes Worldwide Assistance Services:

Medical Emergency Assistance, Baggage Claim, Direct Settlement for in-hospital Medical Expenses Abroad (Subject to policy Terms & conditions and Sub Limits). Medical Evacuation & Repatriation and Loss of Passport Assistance.

Main Exclusion : You are not covered if any expenses incurred directly of indirectly in respect of Traveling against the advice of a Physician, for obtaining treatment; Pre existing ailments & Complications arising out of them, Suicide or attempted suicide; War; Terrorism; Illegal Acts; Dangerous Sports; etc...

For other Exclusions please refer to the policy wordings.

As with all insurance policies there are conditions: for example, there are excesses under most sections of your policy to reduce the incidence of small claims, and you are signing, electronically, that you abide by the conditions. It is a serious offence to misrepresent material facts under an insurance contract (e.g. you confirm, in signing, that there are no pre-existing medical reasons increasing the risk of treatment being required whilst away from home).

Health Insurance

The improvements in our health delivery system in the last 50 years have not kept pace with the needs of a majority of our people. A major reason for this has been that health services respond to the existing "market demand" and needs of a majority of the people do not figure as part of this demand.

Inadequate resources

This is compounded by inadequate resource allocation and inequitable distribution of such resources with a clear bias for urban centers. There has been little effort to sustain investment to build our healthcare infrastructure. To be fair, periods of stagnation have been punctuated by sporadic efforts to enhance public health funding - like the National TB and Malaria programmes of the fifties and sixties and the Primary Health Care

Programme in the late seventies and early eighties.

However even in these cases, most of the gains were frittered away as the matching investment did not support the initial infrastructure created. The fallout of the new policies was a cut in budgetary support to the health sector. Cuts were severe in the first two years of the reforms, followed by some restoration in the succeeding years bringing them to the levels of the pre-reform period.

Limited funds

The compression of funds has a number of far reaching effects. Expenditure on salaries and infrastructure constitutes 70-90 percent of expenditure for most programmes. Faced with limited funds while salaries and infrastructure still require to be maintained, the burden of cutbacks is placed on supplies and materials. Ultimately a skeletal structure survives. Today, prescriptions for restructuring of the health sector are designed to maximize outputs from greatly reduced government support. At 22 percent, the government's share of the total expenditure on healthcare is one of the lowest in the world. It may be contrasted with 70-80 percent in North Europe and 44 percent in the US.

Privatization

The government’s new-found fascination with health insurance is designed to facilitate privatization of the health sector. Wary that a total collapse of the public health infrastructure would also affect the more vocal sections of the people the elite and the middle class health insurance is seen as a useful ploy to replace the state health sector. But such a system addresses the needs of a small fraction because when the state today talks of health insurance, it means private health insurance. All countries with a developed health care infrastructure have health insurance, but in most the major share is made up of by state supported health insurance.

Government’s Role in healthcare

For instance in Japan, France, Canada, England and Netherlands, majority of the population is covered by state funded health insurance. The only large country where private health insurance is dominant is the US, a country that has the most inefficient and expensive health care system in the developed World. It is foolhardy to argue that health care delivery would improve in India if the government sector were replaced by the private sector. In fact there is a need to greatly increase the involvement of the government in providing healthcare.

Health insurance can be purchased on an individual or group basis. Group health insurance, generally available through an employer, may also be offered by other various organizations such as federal societies, labor unions, college health departments, and rural and consumer health cooperatives. The employer usually pays part or all of the costs for the group health insurance available to employees. However, since the protection provided by group health insurance varies from plan to plan, it is wise to check with your employer's human resource department or your union office, to find out exactly what Health insurance coverage and benefits are available to you.

If your group health insurance does not fully cover all of your health needs or you are self-employed, then you may need to supplement your coverage with an individual Health insurance plan. Individual Health insurance can be tailored to your particular needs. It is provided by the Health Insurance Company or agent of your choice. Because Health insurance coverage and costs of such policies vary from company to company you should shop around and compare the prices as well as benefits offered before making a decision to purchase Health insurance.