International Medical/Travel Insurance

What are people using for health insurance when alpine climbing independently outside the US. I'd been using dogtag but lost faith in them recently.

There seem to be several providers floating around often underwritten by Nationwide. Nomads is another like dog tag. My problem with dog tag is their customer service which was nowhere to be found when I needed them and the suspicious claims paperwork which was asking all sorts of questions about tour operators, which made me suspect they wouldn’t honor their obligation if I were climbing without a guide (even though this isn’t listed as an exclusion in their policy).

Don't tell me global rescue. I'm asking about medical insurance, not rescue/evac.

When we went to Scotland last year we purchased a policy from here: https://www.imglobal.com/

Some credit cards, most notably American Express, include or offer travel/medical insurance. Typically you'd need to pay for all of your trip on the card. See: https://www.americanexpress.com/za/network/benefits/travel-insurance.html

Marc801 C wrote: When we went to Scotland last year we purchased a policy from here: https://www.imglobal.com/

Some credit cards, most notably American Express, include or offer travel/medical insurance. Typically you'd need to pay for all of your trip on the card. See: https://www.americanexpress.com/za/network/benefits/travel-insurance.html

Did you look through your exclusions? I've selected the UK as my coverage area (just to be safe, results are the same for where I'm going), narrowed my search to medical travel insurance and selected those for vacation/holiday (rather than visitor/immigrant, work, student, etc) and only found two policies listed both from the same provider: patriot international and patriot platinum international (more expensive, but still dirt cheap). Looking at the "platinum" (and presumably more comprehensive/better plan) I find this in the exclusions,

"any Illness or Injury sustained while taking part in activities designated as Extreme Sports, which include but are in no way
limited to the following (and include any combination or derivative of the following): BASE jumping; cave diving; cliff diving;
downhill mountain biking and racing; extreme skiing; freediving; free flying; free running; free skiing; freestyle scootering;
gliding; heli-skiing; ice canoeing; ice climbing; kitesurfing; mixed martial arts; motocross; motorcycle racing; motor rally;
mountaineering above elevation of 4500 meters from ground level; parkour; piloting a commercial or non-commercial
aircraft; powerbocking; scuba diving or sub aqua pursuits below a depth of 50 meters; snowmobile racing; truck racing;
whitewater kayaking or whitewater rafting Class VI and higher difficulty; and wingsuit flying"

They define "Extreme Sports" elsewhere in the document as follows,
"Extreme Sports: Recreational activities involving a high degree of risk. These activities often involve speed, height, a high
level of physical exertion, and/or highly specialized gear and often carry the potential risk of serious or permanent physical
Injury and even death."

That's a no go.

Take a look at World Nomads.  Their coverage includes a big list of activities.  We had a policy with them for a year when we lived outside the country.  I have not used them for a claim on medical costs but we got robbed and filed a claim for $1,200 worth of stuff.  I had the money direct deposit to my bank account within a week of filing the claim.

We got Global Rescue with the AAC discount for a Pakistan trip in summer 2019.

My partner decked to the tune of a couple vertebrae fractures, I dusted off the ol' Garmin, and Global Rescue had two Pakistani army choppers landing at our Biafo Glacier base camp within four hours.

A+, would recommend

Bogdan P wrote:

Did you look through your exclusions? 

Admittedly not really since it was a tourist trip with no rock climbing. Just enough to ensure we had sufficient coverage.

BobbyReno wrote: Take a look at World Nomads.  Their coverage includes a big list of activities.  We had a policy with them for a year when we lived outside the country.  I have not used them for a claim on medical costs but we got robbed and filed a claim for $1,200 worth of stuff.  I had the money direct deposit to my bank account within a week of filing the claim.

Very helpful to know. Nomads is currently the only option that I know of, but since they're underwritten by the same people as Dog Tag I have some hesitations (not to mention their medical coverage is a scant $100k). That said, what was the filing process like? Did you have any formal organizing party like a travel agency or a tour guide while you were traveling? I had some issues with dogtag's paperwork (which I suspect might be similar to Nomad's considering they're both basically nationwide) seemingly asking for that kind of information, which I did not have since I was traveling independently. My claim was only for $200 so it seemed more trouble than it was worth to file it, and I never found out how it would have played out.

Pat Light wrote: We got Global Rescue with the AAC discount for a Pakistan trip in summer 2019.

My partner decked to the tune of a couple vertebrae fractures, I dusted off the ol' Garmin, and Global Rescue had two Pakistani army choppers landing at our Biafo Glacier base camp within four hours.

A+, would recommend

How did your friend pay for their medical care? Where was it administered? I imagine broken vertebrae in pakistan might be affordable out of pocket, but if he was treated at any point in the US then maybe less so.

I just filed a claim with World Nomads for medical expenses and everything went smoothly. I was on a climbing trip through Asia and injured my leg pretty good (while climbing) in Laos. Anyways the filing process was more or less painless and I had my full medical costs reimbursed within a week and a half. A lot of the paperwork from the hospital they asked for I didn't have, so I just explained the situation and it was no problem. This was my only experience filing a claim with them but I was very happy with the whole process.

Of course, serious alpine climbing is a whole other thing, so not sure if they're the best for that...

I got a policy through Travelex last year (underwritten by Berkshire Hathaway) that included an Adventure Sports upgrade to cover "mountain climbing that requires the use of equipment such as; pick-axes, anchors, bolts, crampons, carabineers, and lead or top-rope anchoring or other specialized equipment". But no experience filing a claim with them. Found it through Squaremouth.com.

Bogdan P wrote:

How did your friend pay for their medical care? Where was it administered? I imagine broken vertebrae in pakistan might be affordable out of pocket, but if he was treated at any point in the US then maybe less so.

It was a patchwork of locations and care, and it was a patchwork of coverage put together from Global Rescue's insurance partner (I believe it was "I Travel Insured"?), her own insurance, and some out of pocket costs. 

One thing that could have been pretty bad is not having had a tour guide operator. Our operator took really good care of us, and when the hospital in Islamabad needed 1 lakh in cash to admit her (I remember it being something like $700?) he put up the cash. It's one of those situations where, you know, you certainly have seven hundred US dollars available to spend, but you're in another country without transportation or a local bank and the folks want it in local currency and don't speak your language particularly well.

Being insured is maybe half the battle --- everything else still needs attention, and it's really nice to have a local advocate 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I've decided to go with World Nomad this time, but I've gone ahead and posted a summary here to help people out with this decision in the future:
https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/118609914/international-medicaltravel-insurance