Horse riding accident victim could have used travel insurance
Created 7/14/2010

Travel insurance is critical to anyone engaging in even the most harmless of activities on vacations, as the UK's Daily Telegraph writer Judith Woods learned the hard way.

Woods was vacationing with her family in France, engaging on a leisurely horseback ride, when one of the animals bolted and threw the writer off. Woods broke her back in the fall. This nightmare scenario was made all the worse by the fact that she didn't have travel insurance and was thus not covered by a medical policy in a foreign country. Her young daughter suffered minor injuries in the fall.

Woods was fortunate that the National Health Service in the UK, which provides free health care for its citizens covered her because she was in an EU country. However, this coverage was only the most basic - reduced care in a public hospital with the most minimal services provided. American travelers don't have the luxury of the NHS to even provide reduced coverage, and Woods would have been out of luck herself outside Europe.

In addition, the NHS did not pay for the ambulance (€1200 euros for her and her daughter) and expenses caused by cancelled flights and nannies that had to be hired for her children. Woods narrowly avoided having to pay for an air ambulance, which would have cost &163;5000 pounds.

Needless to say, the writer has been convinced of the numerous benefits that travel insurance provides, and advised readers to skip pre-flight purchases like clothes and instead protect themselves from medical emergencies.

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Related Articles: Hazardous Sports, Short Term Major Medical, Travel Health Insurance

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