water turkey said:

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A lot of the farmers in the Midwest have it.

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And the ranchers in rural Idaho/ Montana I have met have it also.

A distant cousin had a major heart attack in his late 40s on a cruise ship and they dropped him off at the nearest port- Cancun. He was in the hospital there for weeks before being life flighted to Houston. The hospital stay and the life flight were both very expensive. The hospital would not take his regular health insurance and his family had to pay before they would let him leave to be life flighted.
A have no idea if travel insurance would have covered these expenses but he did not have travel insurance.

Here's a screenshot of our travel insurance policy for our trip to Patagonia in January. We actually filed a claim for some increased travel expenses due to our flight out of Atlanta be canceled on January 10 and rebooked the following day.

When I lived in S. Texas and was a member of the VFD we all had memberships with the Halo Flight out of Corpus.

Corpus or San Antonio were the nearest trauma centers and were each over an hour away. If you're dealing with the "Golden Hour" of trauma you've got to fly. Was nice knowing that no matter what that was a bill I wasn't going to see.

I don't know about the health insurance world, but I know we saw this A LOT in the property insurance side. They just simply could not fathom rural operations. "What... what... what... what do you mean the nearest fire hydrant is 25 miles away? We can't insure that house!" More than once I saw the Chief on the phone trying to explain rural fire fighting and water shuttles to some paper pusher in a big city high rise.

If there's any similarity there to medical coverage, that's a fight I don't want to have. We flew a lot of people from a rural FM road that would not have flown in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Corpus, Austin, etc.

Mas89 said:

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water turkey said:

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A lot of the farmers in the Midwest have it.

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And the ranchers in rural Idaho/ Montana I have met have it also.

A distant cousin had a major heart attack in his late 40s on a cruise ship and they dropped him off at the nearest port- Cancun. He was in the hospital there for weeks before being life flighted to Houston. The hospital stay and the life flight were both very expensive. The hospital would not take his regular health insurance and his family had to pay before they would let him leave to be life flighted.
A have no idea if travel insurance would have covered these expenses but he did not have travel insurance.

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Yes most travel insurances would have covered that if bought for the trip. They are reimbursement based so you still have to front the money though.

Yea basic US insurance doesn't help in Mx.

One more reason for me not to go there. It's been 6 or so years ago but iirc they had to pay well over 100,000 to get him out of that Cancun hospital. They pretty much held him hostage.
He had surgery in Houston and is still kicking.

Did they process the claim without any issues? What was the name of the company?

No problem processing the claim for $600 and I received the funds surprisingly fast. I just had to attach support documentation showing our flight on 1/10 was cancelled and the receipts for the original flight from Buenos Aires to Esquel and the receipt for the rebooked flight.

I purchased the policy through USAA Travel. The policy was issued by Travel Insured.

We're going fishing in Alaska in September and I got a policy from IMG. There are several websites online that will take your trip info and give you a list of insurance companies to choose from. I used Squaremouth https://www.squaremouth.com/.

We've got Halo Flight household coverage as a Nueces Electric Coop customer (coverage is 23 counties) for $60 a year.

If you're a member of Texas Wildlife Association (everyone should be), you get a discount to AirMedCare Network.

Ditto on TWA. Great organization!

https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/ambulance-services Medicare may not cover all of the charges. I'm old. I carry it and I am in the ins. business. There are group contracts that can cover all of the eligible charges subject to policy benefits. Strictly an individual decision.