An acquaintance of mine recounted an incident which occurred to him while travelling less then a year ago to the the USA, specifically California. This person - lets call him John, decided to fly to San Francisco to attend a family wedding. A few months earlier, John had been experiencing chest pain and decided to visit his family doctor for a cardiac consultation. His doctor sent him for blood work and an electrocardiogram, which revealed abnormal findings. He was referred to a cardiologist who encouraged John to have further cardiac testing such as an angiogram and dopler ultrasound in order to fully evaluate his heart condition and to ascertain whether or not there was any problem which needed to be addressed urgently. It was recommended that he take care of this prior to travel. However, John decided to delay these tests and purchased travel emergency coverage through his travel insurance carrier instead, just in case.

Thinking that he was fully protected in the event of a medical emergency, he flew to California and after a lovely first 10 days of his vacation, started experiencing severe chest pain and shortness of breath. He took a taxi to a hospital in San Francisco where it was concluded that he had 5 blocked coronary (heart) arteries and required immediate open heart cardiac bypass surgery. After successful cardiac surgery and a 2 week stay in the hospital to recover, John flew back to Toronto. Once there, he was advised by the accounting department of the hospital at which he stayed, that his insurance carrier had denied his medical claim (which was in the neighborhood of $450,000.00 US), citing that their investigation revealed that he had abnormal cardiac tests and history prior to getting on the plane, and had travelled against his doctors advice, with pending recommended cardiac tests which had not been done prior to travelling. This led to the hospital litigating against John to recover their costs for his hospitalization, and to John having to hire lawyers to try to fight this claim.

The essence of this story is to be completely aware that all travel insurance carriers are quite specific about their "pre-existing medical condition rules," which usually requires a stability period, depending on the age of the traveller, as well as the selected insurance carrier, anywhere from 7 to 365 days. As well, travellers should be aware that if they are relying on their credit card travel insurance benefits, that there are limits to that particular coverage, i.e. trips may not be longer than 8 days in many cases, pre-existing clauses, certain medical conditions might be uninsurable, such as cancer and congestive heart failure. Additionally, it is extremely important to be completely truthful and accurate when applying for travel medical emergency benefits in order to ascertain what will and won't be covered when or if needed.