I am wondering what others in Ontario buy for travel medical insurance when purchasing their flight to Italy online through the airline...not using a travel agency.

Can you give me some suggestions?

Thanks,
J.

Try the auto club. They usually have some excellent deals. And my canadian friends had some insurance under canadian health plan. But that was a couple of years ago. Check and see.

RBC Insurance is our usual fallback.

Air Canada was/is pushing people towards RBC. But when I looked it had so many outs for RBC that it didn't make sense. At least it didn't seem like a great deal to me.

quote:

Originally posted by Doru:
RBC Insurance is our usual fallback.

Where do you purchase it, other than a travel agent?

And do you know the limits OHIP covers for travel out of the country?

Our credit card offers up to 15 days out of country but we are going longer than that.

I've purchased on line at the Manulife website. Also if you have an Amex card, you can add days to the coverage by calling the company they use and you can probably get coverage there even if you don't have an Amex card 1 866 896 5707.

I don't know if there is an overall limit to OHIP, but they will only pay what they would have paid in Ontario. Example: If your hospital room charge is $500 a day because of the country you are in and the OHIP schedule for Ontario hospitals is $350 a day, they will only pay for $350. That's why you need out of country (and even out of province medical coverage.) If you do ever make a claim, the private insurance company you have will coordinate the benefits with OHIP - you claim with your private insurance company and they will submit to OHIP and then pay the balance. This is all done by the insurance company as long as you authorize them to do so when you make your claim.

As far as I know the RBC Insurance can be purchased either on line or from travel agents, irrespective of whether you have booked the trip with the agent or not.

I am not sure whether this applies in Canada, but in Australia you can select a Gold Visa bank credit card and provided you charge at least about A$250 of travel cost on the card you are then automatically covered for travel insurance. Cost about A$80 per year. I am not aware of anyone with problems with this system.

quote:

Originally posted by Monty:
I am not sure whether this applies in Canada, but in Australia you can select a Gold Visa bank credit card and provided you charge at least about A$250 of travel cost on the card you are then automatically covered for travel insurance. Cost about A$80 per year. I am not aware of anyone with problems with this system.

Some of the cards have a travel limit of 15 days for coverage. So if you are out of the province for 16 or more days, you wouldn't have any coverage from them. Need to read and understand the "fine" print on these.

Thanks for the help, everyone. I think we'll go with RBC, as that is what we've always topped up our other coverage with when we booked through a T.A. and have never had to use it.

Hi, I am from Montreal but I use to buy from one of the 2:

www.travelguard.com but buy through us site.

or
www.travelsafe.com

I am using these because prices are better and I usually buy cancellation insurance, so that is covered too.

If you only need health protection, companies like Blue Cross have good discounts if you have some professional membership. They do have a website too.
http://www.bluecross.ca/
Other than that
www.worldaccess.ca has also great deals.

It depends what you need to be covered.