Travel medical insurance for a honeymoon abroad: an example

Hannah and Luis Ortega live in Tucson, Arizona. Hannah, 31, is a physical therapy assistant. Luis, 33, is an HVAC technician. They married in May and planned a 12-day honeymoon in Greece for June: a few days in Athens, then the islands of Naxos and Santorini.

Both of them are covered by the health plan Luis gets through work. Hannah has had asthma since she was a child. It is well controlled with a daily inhaler, and she carries a rescue inhaler for bad days.

This story follows their trip with Single Trip Platinum, a travel medical plan from BlueCross BlueShield Global Solutions (formerly GeoBlue). It shows why they bought it, how they used it and what it did not do.

Why their plan at home wasn’t the whole answer

Hannah started where most people do: does our health insurance work in Greece? The carrier puts it plainly on its comparison page: most domestic plans offer limited coverage abroad, and your U.S. health plan “might stop at the border.” Its plan pages add that medical evacuations “aren’t always covered by your current health insurance” when you’re outside your home country.

They didn’t want to find out what their own plan would or would not do from a hospital bed on an island. So they looked at a plan built for the trip.

Why they chose Single Trip Platinum

BlueCross BlueShield Global Solutions offers two single-trip plans, Gold and Platinum. Both cover a trip of up to 182 days. The difference that mattered to Hannah was her asthma.

• Gold does not cover pre-existing conditions. Its certificate says benefits are not available for services within 180 days of the start of coverage if they are related to a pre-existing condition. Their whole trip would have fallen inside that window.
• Platinum covers pre-existing conditions “as any other condition, subject to the terms and exclusions listed in the policy.”

Platinum requires that you’re enrolled in a primary health plan, such as a group plan through an employer. Luis’s work plan qualified them. Medicaid and VA health plans do not count as a primary plan for this purpose.

Platinum also pays outpatient prescriptions outside the U.S. at 100% of reasonable charges, up to $5,000. Gold pays 50%.

They made two choices when they bought it:

• A $500,000 maximum benefit. The options are $50,000, $100,000, $500,000 and $1,000,000 per insured person.
• A $250 deductible. The options are $0, $100, $250 and $500. The deductible is per insured person per policy period, so Hannah and Luis each had their own.

After the deductible, the plan pays 100% of reasonable charges for covered care, up to the maximum. Emergency medical transportation, which includes evacuation and repatriation, has its own limit of up to $500,000 per trip and no deductible.

They bought the plan three weeks before they left. The plan has to be bought in your home country before you depart.

Getting ready

Before the flight, they downloaded the carrier’s mobile app. It holds digital ID cards, a provider search, claim tracking, medical translations, a medication equivalents finder and location-based safety alerts.

Hannah used the medication equivalents finder to look up what her rescue inhaler is called in Greece, in case she needed one. She still packed enough of her own medicine for the whole trip. The plan is for sudden, unexpected illness or injury. Its certificate says it does not pay for care that was “planned, anticipated, scheduled, or reasonably foreseeable” before you leave, so routine refills you know you’ll need are yours to bring.

Day three: an earache and a video call

After an afternoon of swimming in Athens, Luis woke up with a sore, blocked ear. It wasn’t an emergency, and neither of them wanted to spend a day of the honeymoon in a waiting room.

Every plan includes unlimited telemedicine at no extra cost. Luis opened a same-day video appointment from his phone. The doctor spoke English, looked at his symptoms, and sent the consultation notes to his phone. The carrier says prescriptions are available “where regulations allow,” and here the doctor wrote one for ear drops.

The video visit cost nothing. The ear drops cost $14 at a pharmacy near their hotel.

Day seven: an asthma flare on Naxos

On their second night on Naxos, smoke from a brush fire drifted over the town. By midnight Hannah’s chest was tight, and her rescue inhaler wasn’t helping the way it usually does.

Luis called the Global Service Center using the number on her ID card. It is open around the clock, with multilingual staff who help members find care. They pointed the couple to a hospital in the carrier’s network. The carrier’s network includes doctors and hospitals in over 190 countries, and many of them bill the plan directly.

At the hospital, Hannah had breathing treatments, a steroid and a chest X-ray, and was watched for about six hours. By morning she was breathing normally. She was not admitted. The doctor sent her out with a prescription for steroid tablets and a new rescue inhaler.

The arithmetic

The hospital billed the plan directly. Its covered charges came to $1,180.

To keep the numbers simple, this example assumes no other plan paid any part of these bills. The certificate says the plan is “secondary coverage to all other policies” and reduces what it pays to the extent another plan covers the same expenses.

Hannah’s hospital visit

Step 1. Covered charges: $1,180.

Step 2. Subtract Hannah’s $250 deductible: $1,180 minus $250 is $930.

Step 3. Pay 100% of the rest: $930, well under her $500,000 maximum.

The plan paid the hospital $930. Hannah owed the hospital $250.

Hannah’s prescriptions

Step 1. The pharmacy charged $38. Hannah paid it and kept the receipt.

Step 2. Her $250 deductible was already met by the hospital visit.

Step 3. Platinum pays outpatient prescriptions outside the U.S. at 100% of reasonable charges, up to $5,000.

After she sent in a claim form with the receipt, the plan paid her back $38.

Luis’s ear drops

Step 1. The pharmacy charged $14.

Step 2. Luis’s own $250 deductible had not been touched. The certificate says the deductible applies to all covered expenses unless it says otherwise, so the $14 counted toward his deductible.

The plan paid nothing for the ear drops. Luis had $236 of his deductible left for the trip ($250 minus $14).

For the trip as a whole: the medical costs were $1,180 plus $38 plus $14, or $1,232. The plan paid $930 plus $38, or $968. The couple paid $250 plus $14, or $264. And $968 plus $264 is $1,232.

The fine print they read afterward

Two parts of the certificate made more sense once they had used the plan.

What counts as an emergency. The certificate says a previously diagnosed chronic condition with ongoing, low-level symptoms is not a medical emergency “unless symptoms suddenly become so severe that immediate medical aid is required.” Hannah’s asthma is a pre-existing condition, and Platinum covers it, but the sudden flare is what made this an emergency visit rather than routine care.

Evacuation. The plan includes emergency evacuation, but only when the plan’s medical director decides adequate care isn’t available locally. You start that process by calling the number on your ID card. Hannah was treated well on Naxos, so no one considered moving her.

A bag that went missing for two days

On the way out, Luis’s suitcase missed their connection and arrived two days later. The airline delivered it to the hotel.

The plan does have a baggage benefit: up to $500 per trip, and no more than $100 for any one bag or item. But it is secondary to the airline. It is for bags that are lost, damaged or stolen, and the certificate asks you to report a loss to local authorities within 24 hours and file written proof within 90 days. A bag that turns up two days late was the airline’s problem, not the plan’s.

What the plan did not do

It is not trip cancellation insurance. It covers medical care. The carrier says a full refund of the premium is available if a trip is canceled entirely. The certificate says there are no refunds after the coverage starts, after you leave, or once a claim has been filed. It does not pay back hotel deposits or nonrefundable flights.

It doesn’t cover care at home. The coverage area is any country outside the United States, and the certificate excludes expenses incurred in your home country. Hannah’s asthma check-up after the trip went through their regular health plan.

It doesn’t cover routine pregnancy or maternity care. The certificate excludes pregnancy and maternity care other than complications of pregnancy that come up during the trip. For newlyweds, that is worth knowing before a long trip.

It doesn’t cover every activity. Luis wanted to try parasailing on Santorini. The certificate lists parasailing among the hazardous activities it excludes, along with things like skydiving and bungee jumping. Downhill skiing and scuba diving to 20 meters or less are covered up to $25,000, and divers need PADI or NAUI certification or a certified instructor.

Some benefits are for other situations. Emergency family travel, which helps pay for one person to fly out and stay near the hospital, applies when someone traveling alone is expected to be in the hospital for more than 7 days or is in critical condition. Trip interruption pays up to $1,000 toward transportation if a covered illness or injury interrupts the trip. Neither applied to them.

It is not health insurance for everyday life. The certificate says it is not Minimum Essential Coverage under the Affordable Care Act. It sits alongside a primary plan for a trip. It does not replace one.

Is a single-trip plan right for you?

Do you have a condition you manage every day? If so, Gold’s 180-day pre-existing condition exclusion matters, and Platinum may be the better fit, provided you have a primary health plan.

How long is the trip? Single-trip coverage runs from one day up to 182 days.

Which deductible can you live with? Each traveler pays their own deductible before the plan pays, even on small bills like Luis’s ear drops.

Are you ready for the paperwork? Network hospitals can bill the plan directly. A pharmacy usually won’t. Keep receipts, give notice of a claim within 60 days, and send proof within 90 days.

The short version

For Hannah and Luis, Single Trip Platinum paid $968 toward $1,232 of medical costs on their honeymoon: $930 directly to the hospital on Naxos and $38 back for Hannah’s prescriptions. The telemedicine visit was free. They paid $264, mostly Hannah’s deductible. The plan did not pay for anything at home, did not cover the activity Luis skipped, and was never trip cancellation insurance.

This is an outline of how the plan works. The certificate of coverage sets the full terms, including the exclusions and the limits.