Holiday Insurance Woes

[denonDave]

Hi All.
I just want to tell you about my recent experiences with travel insurance. I'm not sure whether anyone has had a similar experience, but if so, what did you do?
In January my wife and I booked a 16 night holiday to the USA, including a 7 night cruise around the Gulf of Mexico (lovely, I hear you say!).The holiday is at the end of September. I've recently paid the balance, over £2700 in all.
Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago, my wife went into hospital, having trouble swallowing. She had a stricture in her upper stomach, caused by a gastric band inserted 11 years ago! The surgeon managed to open up the stricture and she can now eat reasonably ok. She was referred to a specialist who has told her she will have to have surgery to remove the band. He said that the operation would not be scheduled until after our holiday as it is not urgent, and she would be perfectly ok to travel.
We are required to inform our insurers of any medical changes and duly contacted them. We were informed that we couldn’t make an amendment to our existing policy, but could cancel with a full refund, and take out a new policy to include cover for the current medical condition, to which we agreed. Unfortunately the lady couldn’t find my wife’s condition on her computer so she said that she would get someone from Medical Screening to call us back. 30 minutes later I had an email informing me that our insurance had been cancelled – so I had to get onto them and take out another policy with the condition excluded! To cut a long story short – they will not now insure my wife for the stricture as she is awaiting surgery.
I have tried to get cover from loads of insurance companies (including medical cover specialists) and they all say that they cannot cover a condition which is awaiting surgery.
I really don’t know what to do now. We took out insurance in good faith, and if my wife had been told that she couldn’t travel we would have got our money back. Somehow we have ended up in limbo – one minute covered, the next not. It seems we have 3 options:
1: Cancel the holiday and lose (as of today) £900.
2: Hope nothing happens and we can still go, and nothing happens while away.
3: Get someone to break my leg a week before our holiday and claim it all back!
Sorry this is such a long post, I wanted to get it off my chest. Can anyone tell me what I did wrong – I keep looking at everything and can’t see how I could have done anything to avoid this situation. Any suggestions?
Dave

[oldnewbie]

You can rest assured that you did everything correctly or you would of invalidated your insurance, Hope this is of some help Travel insurance for pre-existing medical conditions | moneysupermarket UK

[paul1967]

What ever you deside do not go to the US without insurance,cause if anything happens you could loose everything.

[indianwells]

Originally Posted by paul1967

What ever you deside do not go to the US without insurance,cause if anything happens you could loose everything.

Seconded. 3 years ago I had to spend 24 hours in an American hospital. I had every test known to man for chest pains. Turned out it was indigestion!

Went to get the bill 3 days later. $18,000!!!!!!!!! Nearly had a heart attack for real! Luckily my insurance paid out in full.