The medical math
The core of every travel policy is emergency medical cover. Outside your home country, your domestic health insurance mostly stops working: US employer plans cover little abroad, Medicare covers nothing outside the USA, and Indian health policies are domestic by definition. Abroad, you pay list price — and in the USA that means roughly $2,000–3,000 for an ER visit and $11,000+ per hospital day.
Medical evacuation is the quiet giant. Air ambulances bill $25,000–200,000 depending on distance and equipment. It is the single benefit where the difference between a $50,000 limit and a $500,000 limit genuinely matters, especially for cruises, islands and mountain regions.
Cancellation: protecting money you already spent
Trip cancellation refunds prepaid, non-refundable costs when a listed event — illness, injury, a death in the family, natural disaster — stops the trip before it starts. Trip interruption does the same after departure and typically adds the cost of getting home early.
The key discipline is insuring the real number: add flights, hotels, tours and cruise fares, and update the figure if you add bookings. Under-insured trips can see proportionally reduced payouts on some wordings.
The everyday benefits you will statistically use
Medical claims are rare; delay and baggage claims are common. Delay benefits pay for meals and a hotel when you are stranded past a waiting period; baggage delay funds emergency clothes; baggage loss pays out when the bag never appears. These are small-dollar benefits, but they are the ones most travellers actually experience.
Modern plans add practical services that never show on a benefits table: 24×7 assistance lines that find English-speaking doctors, telemedicine consults, and help replacing lost passports.
What insurance does not do
Travel insurance covers listed, unforeseen events. It does not refund a trip you cancel because you changed your mind (that needs a Cancel For Any Reason upgrade), does not cover known events (a storm already named when you bought), and excludes planned medical treatment, most adventure sports without riders, and losses you can recover elsewhere first.
Reading the exclusions once before buying prevents most claim disappointments. Our plan pages list them plainly for every plan we compare.
Apply this to your actual trip
Run an instant comparison, or tell our consultants the trip — they’ll shortlist plans and confirm live premiums with the insurers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is travel insurance worth it for a cheap trip?
The medical and evacuation risk is independent of trip price — a $300 flight to a country with expensive healthcare still carries the six-figure tail risk. For cheap domestic trips with refundable bookings, the case is genuinely weaker.
What percentage of the trip cost should insurance be?
US comprehensive plans typically run 4–8% of the insured trip cost, rising with age. Duration-priced plans (India-market, travel medical) commonly work out to $1–4 per travel day for younger travellers.
Does my credit card already cover this?
Premium cards carry real but partial benefits — usually rental car damage and some delay/baggage cover, rarely meaningful medical or evacuation limits. Treat card cover as a supplement, not a substitute; check its medical limit before relying on it.
Keep reading
Premiums shown are indicative estimates compiled from publicly available plan literature and typical market rates — the final premium, terms and issuance are always set by the insurer. Plan benefits, limits and exclusions are summarised for comparison; the policy wording issued by the insurer is the only binding document. Confirm current terms with the insurer or our consultants before purchase.