Hi There, this happened to me. We had a long-planned holiday but hadn’t booked the insurance when we initially booked the flights/hotels and then I got my (shock) cancer diagnosis. ‘Normally’, we’d just buy medical insurance online, before we departed, and it would only take a few minutes and not cost much. By coincidence, the timing was such that further tests and protocol meant that my treatment couldn’t start for the same two weeks that we’d planned to be away. Emotionally, I was struggling to decide whether to cancel the holiday and focus inwardly (!) or to ‘go-for-it’ and see if I could (still) have some fun? And then, I tried to get a medical insurance quote! (FYI, for the USA as the destination). 2-days later (!!!), of phone calls, comparison-sites, and web-applications (all of which asked identical cancer health questions), I’d been totally declined by most and for those that would give me a quote the premiums ranged from £2,200 to £3,600. It felt crazy to me, my biggest actual health risk (I’m sure?) seemed to be (proverbially) a wayward yellow cab in NYC (?) but, somehow, just because I had un-started cancer treatment no-one wanted to know me. We then looked at whether we had any existing financial product that included travel insurance and discovered (… my wife’s wonderful persistence was incredible!) that a long-standing Nationwide Flex account did, once upon a time, have such a benefit. Nationwide had diligently signposted, several years prior (we hadn’t really noticed - we’d never used it), that this benefit was being withdrawn (it wasn’t a ‘premium’ account) and, bless them, they had thought to communicate a discount ‘code’ for us to go (presumably) directly to their supplier (for this benefit) instead. This took us to *Direct Line* (who hadn’t been mentioned in any blogs/commentary?) and they calmly said, “of course, we can exclude Cancer from your cover (if this is what you require) and simply include everything else”. The Direct Line quote was £220! (Trying to be kind…) I think the other suppliers had got in a ‘knot’ as to fully insuring the cancer or trying to exclude it and simply, instead (…. running out of my kindness..!), put-up a crazy premium to, I think, rip-me-off just when I’ve become vulnerable (there were some choice expletives). Needless to say, nothing ‘medical’ happened on the holiday but I was very grateful to give Direct Line my money (just in case the ‘yellow cab’ had lived-up to its proverb - my apologies to this community for picking on them as a proverb. Every cab trip we took in NYC was driven beautifully!). I would have been angry beyond belief to give anyone else £2,000+ for this cover. As an almost guaranteed 100% profit (for the uplift), it’s exploitation? I’d decided to cancel the holiday verses give anyone £2,000+ ‘profit’ but Direct Line were fantastic! We could have kissed them. So, if you’ve read this and you are in a similar predicament (and you feel that you can ‘self-insure’ the cancer risk) then I’d certainly recommend giving Direct Line a call. We had a GREATvholiday. It’s back to reality now - my treatment starts on Friday. Good luck to us all!!
