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Get Insured Folks !!

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
So I'm skiing down a nice open blue quite fast - 40km/h or so - doing a bit of carving so sweeping left and right. As I carve left I hear a scream from behind and almost immediately am knocked off my skis and spun around by a lady from upslope. I'm OK but she breaks her collarbone, so her holiday is over. For me it's a near miss......but could so easily have been much, much more serious. As with driving, you can't control other piste users - so make sure you're covered !
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Agree with this! I had an equipment malfunction and in the middle of a bog standard turn on a piste came out of my binding and broke my shoulder. Hospital bills in Switzerland were just over £1,000...luckily all covered under my travel insurance.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
I have broken and hurt absolutely nothing, yet! Insurance is something I am absolutely not going to go skiing without.

The one person I know who has needed it has not had it. Didn't cost a firtune as all done with the aid of E1-11 or whatever it is called but not worth taking the risk.
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My mum, aged 78, slipped going for a walk rather than risking skiing. Insurance picked up all the helicopter and return home costs no quibble
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Legend. wrote:
I have broken and hurt absolutely nothing, yet! Insurance is something I am absolutely not going to go skiing without.


Yep. My annual insurance is about £50 but that's nothing compared to what it could cost if I need to be taken off the mountain. Given that I'm exposing myself to 3 weeks of risk a year it just seems like a no brainier, amazed that anyone would think otherwise.
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 You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
FWIW our worldwide travel insurance is through our Yorkshire Bank current account and has been used once in the years that we've had it.

Top notch service and no quibbles on any part of the claim, well they wouldn't pay my 5 Euro parking tickets so instead upped my "hospital allowance" when MrsHD was injured.
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Medical bills maybe €£1000's

But it the

3rd Party Public Liability Claim that could cost you €£100000's
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
Can I just say - something for you all to consider - rather than shopping around for the cheapest insurance deal, check what you're *actually* getting for your money. I always pay more for my insurance - I buy an annual multi trip policy, and I always buy the 'Premium' (or equivalent) package. Which when I hurt myself in resort this year, meant private healthcare, private physio on return to the UK, and lower excesses on the claims. The higher-priced package must have paid for itself 10 times over.

In terms of getting hurt in resort, I didn't have any treatment at all, and I made my own way off the mountain, and I still racked up a bill of £5,000. Just let that be a warning.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
what was the 5K bill for if no treatment and no evac? Medic evaluation and pisteur help?
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 Ski the Net with snowHeads
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One of the major benefits of travel insurance is the potential for a repatriation being covered. You may get local evac off the mountain with Snowcard of whatever the name is of the uplift on your ski pass, you may get local treatment under your E111 but you may need to be repatriated which could be earlier than your normal booked return or later and you may need special assistance such as a row of three seats being available to you or even an air ambulance. Always, always, always ensure you have adequate insurance. Like dp says we have always purchased the top level of annual multi trip insurance and have never claimed but the comfort and assurance it provides is priceless.
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 snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
@dp, who was the provider. I have had mixed experience recently.
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
One thing to check people is that your credit/credit card details are current for you travel insurance renewal. My card expired and I had the new one through months before my renewal was due. We got back from our ski holiday to find a letter saying they had cancelled our insurance weeks before had gone away so we had been uninsured on our ski holiday - eek. They said they had written a letter to us but we certainly never received it. Thank god nothing happened.
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
Or don't put it on auto renew, then they have to contact you every year, and it will act as a prompt to check the details are still correct and the cover still meets your needs.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
@FFIRMIN, Carte neige covers repatriation as well. You do not need UK based travel insurance. Snowcard is a UK based snowsport insurance. E111 was replaced with EHIC years ago.
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
johnE wrote:
@FFIRMIN, Carte neige covers repatriation as well. You do not need UK based travel insurance.


er...well, if you are in France where Carte Neige is sold.
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Im not sure if this is true but i was told (Austria specifically) it you read the very small print of the t&c of lift companys an articles of association with ski resorts.

It is compulsory to be insured.

Therefore if your involved in an accident with no insurance you may facr a double blow with the Police.
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
stanton wrote:
Im not sure if this is true but i was told (Austria specifically) it you read the very small print of the t&c of lift companys an articles of association with ski resorts.

It is compulsory to be insured.

Therefore if your involved in an accident with no insurance you may facr a double blow with the Police.


Did you get toilet paper yet?
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Bennyboy1 wrote:
@dp, who was the provider. I have had mixed experience recently.


Yeah @dp, please do share. Who was it with?
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@snowglider, @Bennyboy1, I always use MPI, on their 'Excel' policy. It has always been a brilliant service, and they also give no limitation for skiing off-piste, with or without a guide. Highly recommend.

endoman wrote:
what was the 5K bill for if no treatment and no evac? Medic evaluation and pisteur help?

Below prices are approximate since I only saw the invoices in the hospitals, didn't keep any as they sent directly to assistance company.
Everything did cost money as it was all done in private facilities since there were no public hospitals in either resort. The assistance company were helpful in finding details of private clinics and directing me to them (and paying the taxis).

Taxi off the mountain: £40
First hospital appointment, inc X-Rays and painkillers: £500
Second hospital appointment, inc X-Rays: £700
Taxi to/from second appointment: £100
Third hospital appointment (specialist hospital), inc CT scan: £1500
Taxi to/from third appointment (specialist): £600 (it was a 2 hour drive away)
Fourth appointment: £300
Taxi to/from fourth appointment: £100
Private transfer from hotel to airport: £300
Private transfer from UK airport to my home: £200
Crutches: £120
Painkillers: £60
Other drugs: £40
Credit Card charges: circa £100
UK Physiotherapy: £500

add it all up... this comes to in the region of £5,150...

These costs are all rounded so obviously it wasn't exactly that, but it would have been something in the region of £5,000.
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
@dp, thanks a lot. I'll be giving them a call today or tomorrow.
If I'm not being nosy (and I do realise everyone's particular circumstancess are different), what did they want off you for an Excel policy?
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You'll need to Register first of course.
I have travel insurance bundled with my Natwest account which looks reasonable, covering snow sport and I believe off-piste with a guide. I am tied to them as they also agree to cover my daughter's congenital heart condition and its 'free'.

I am wondering if it's possible to get travel insurance that only includes the off-piste portion (medical and rescue) to supplement what I currently have without the other travel components. In past years I've bought separate policies to cover off-piste but these were expensive and all-encompassing which meant I was doubling up.
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Yep, essential to be insured. Husband ended up in French ICU one summer (bacterial pneumonia - went from a mountain bike race in resort to ICU in 12 hrs v v v bad indeed). I had pay the ambulance to get him there, A&E the took the EHIC card and then luckily, just treated him. After that the insurance kicked in and covered the ICU stay + 3 weeks in a regular ward and then repatriation...mind you he was very disappointed when the ambulance driver taking him and the UK Dr they had sent over, to the airport asked 'avion prive' and the Dr said 'no easyjet'.
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
@dp, Wow, that lot added up.

My accident in France went like this. Fell on piste and suffered shoulder separation. Skied down to medical centre. Examined by nurse and doctor and X rays. Diagnosis given and explanined in English. I was given the old fashioned X-Ray film to keep. Given prescription for pain killers and told to get it sorted back in the UK (I had the operation in January). The bill IIRC was about 60 euros in France. Since the insurance has a £100 excess it was not worth making a claim
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 You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
An old friend of mine, now sadly no longer with us, collapsed at Ibiza airport. When she woke up in hospital she was told she had a brain tumor. Unfortunately, she wasn't insured, and the bill to get her home was over £10,000. Quite a lot for a family who lived in a council house Sad
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 Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Had full insurance and my E 111 .. when i had the accident in january my insurance company were fantastic, they paid all the bills arranged everything for travel and hotel for the wife, without insurance it would have been a nightmare... we have a family cover even though my boys are 24 and 27 !!
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 snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
@snowglider, I got an annual multi-trip policy, with additional cover for a laptop up to £1500, for £138. Do be aware that multi-trip cover runs July-June, not January-December, so if you buy multi-trip now you may not get your moneys worth! But just go on their site and get a quote. I looked at all the options and chose it to be the best. Yes, I know it's not the £50-60 that some people speak of, and it's not free with my credit card... but honestly in one hit I got an injury that racked up £5k of medical bills and meant I had to cancel a trip... if I'd gone for anything cheaper it'd have cost me a lot more. It's the risk you take, but even if I buy pricier insurance and have no accidents for the next 10 years, I reckon I'll still come out winning. So do take that into account!

@johnE, yep it adds up. I would say the following:
- if your x-ray was EUR60, it was a state hospital and you'd have paid that price with your E111. In a private clinic - as I ended up in - it'd be a minimum 5 times that and the E111 doesn't give you a discount.
- Because it's a state run hospital, they want to minimise expense to themselves. With a private, without me pointing the finger of corruption too far, all the medical professionals I saw in the UK said that at £1000 a scan, private clinics will often 'err on the side of a CT scan' where possible because it's a nice little earner. They also take X-Rays from 5 angles and charge for them individually.

It's fair to say there is a widely held belief / knowledge that private clinics, especially once they know your insurer is paying direct, not reimbursing you... will base your treatment on the 'spare no expense' option. Yes, it might sometimes mean a CT picks up something the X-Ray didn't - which can help. And in my case, the first clinic didn't spot something because the X-Ray couldn't see it, but the multiple angles of X-Rays in the second clinic found it. So I'm not saying it's all about profiteering. But the doctors in the UK did comment that the CT was unnecessary and the number of X-Rays was reasonably excessive. So you probably will get a better standard of care - however you will also pay for it.

I used to live in Dubai where all healthcare is private. Walking in as a well-dressed white guy to our local hospital, they'd straight away suss that you probably had a decent job with decent healthcare cover, and would try their best to do a cat scan every time you had a migraine or an MRI on a simple sports injury, just because they know your insurer will deal with it and they'll make a pretty penny out of something that doesn't really need it.
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 And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
Just got back from a trip 2 weeks ago. Mate i was with fractured his shoulder on the first day. Doctors wanted to operate. Mate had no excess £15 insurance.

They took care of everything. Covered all medical bills, night in airport hotel, flight back (came home the next day), taxi from stansted to Cornwall.

He is now also claiming for 80% of holiday cost and some expenses.

All that for £15
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 So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
@KernowRed, public or private hospital? Public is much less expensive for the insurer, they take your EHIC details and claim most of the money back through the government.

For anyone here who voted leave... I hope you're looking forward to hiked insurance prices when they can't claim healthcare back anymore! In fact I hope you'll cover the shortfall for all those who voted remain, because ours will go up too.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
It was all private. He didn't have a EHIC
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
wow. how on earth do they make any money?
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
holidayloverxx wrote:
johnE wrote:
@FFIRMIN, Carte neige covers repatriation as well. You do not need UK based travel insurance.


er...well, if you are in France where Carte Neige is sold.


Also doubt it would cover cost if holiday if illness forced cancellation before travel? That's where normal insurance is newded
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
@Boris, absolutely. Carte Niege gets you off the mountain, treated and home. But if you've booked more than 1 trip that season, it won't help you out cancelling them and seeing your money back.

I know people who do, however, buy 'normal' travel insurance and then Carte Niege. That's not too bad a plan. The 'normal' travel insurance will cover you for the cancellation. I've never seen a cancellation policy which excludes you for the way in which you inflicted the injury. They're insuring you for the fact that you've cancelled by the advice of a GP, not for the actual injury which caused it.

on another note... a little warning. some ski insurers let you choose your ski location in the insurance policy, and some (including mine - MPI) have 'France' as an option as well as 'Europe'. I skied with somebody in Chamonix who had selected 'France' for insurance purposes, then we crossed into Courmayeur for the day. Fortunately she didn't get hurt but went a little white faced when she realised she'd spent the whole day hooning around the area with no insurance cover.
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 Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
@dp, I had no sense of the doctor in Les Arcs trying to inflate the bill. They just did the normal examination I would expect. In fact on return to the UK the local hospital insisted on another two X rays that the consultant actually said were useless and prefered the French ones. I had the impression that the French doctor and the nurse saw this type of injury almost daily and delt with it with the minimum of fuss and hassle. I have no complaints with them or the subsequent treatment on the NHS.

@Boris, Of course Carte Neige will not cover the cost of cancellation. However I think this is overrated. My wife was diagnosed with cancer in the autumn and we had to cancel two trips we had planned. Together we had only committed to a few hundred pounds in total on both of them and we discovered that we could actually recover the avios we had used without cost. You may be amazed that many hotels allow cancellation without penalty, lift passes, etc are only paid when you get to the resort. When I checked it was barely above the excess on my travel insurance.

Having said that I do have travel insurance. It costs a lot of money, about £500 per year for both of us, but with excesses, for many incidents it is not worth claiming.
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@dp, before we assume that No EU = No EHIC...Switzerland accepts EHIC and is not in the EU.

All is not lost...

We ski a lot in Switzerland, we never bother with holiday insurance, but we do take the Swiss equivalent of Carre Neige.
That covers the resue from the slopes etc.
EHIC works 100% fine in Switzerland, even with our local GP there. With that 99% of medical bills are covered.

I'll take the risk on repatriation, especially since we drive to/from the UK in our own car.

When we went to Japan though...very full scale insurance!
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 Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
holidayloverxx wrote:
johnE wrote:
@FFIRMIN, Carte neige covers repatriation as well. You do not need UK based travel insurance.


er...well, if you are in France where Carte Neige is sold.
You can buy Carte Neige online and they will post the documents to you. It's a global policy, IIRC, not France only (although it's unlikely that it will be as convenient to use it in others countries as it is in France were it is recognised by rescue and medical centres and can mean they deal with the insurer directly rather than getting the injured party to pay directly and then claim back).
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johnE wrote:
@dp, I had no sense of the doctor in Les Arcs trying to inflate the bill. They just did the normal examination I would expect. In fact on return to the UK the local hospital insisted on another two X rays that the consultant actually said were useless and prefered the French ones. I had the impression that the French doctor and the nurse saw this type of injury almost daily and delt with it with the minimum of fuss and hassle. I have no complaints with them or the subsequent treatment on the NHS.


Was it private though? Surely it can't have been... no private hospital would work for 60 euros.

For hospitals not relying on profit, there is no point in pumping up the bill. For private clinics who do, there is sense.

If you went to a state hospital (which, for 60 euros, I highly expect you did) there is no incentive for them to make extra money as they're not a commercial business.
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 Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
@dp, It wasn't a hospital, only the resort medical centre with only a single doctor and a nurse. They did everything including the paperwork. Finding it however took some walking around the apartment blocks of Arc 1800
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
@rungsp, Switzerland is in Europe
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
it's interesting to read dp's account of the level of service provided by MPI.......

I'm glad that you received a good level of service from MPI and hope that you are on the mend.
I was (am) also insured with MPI on their "Excel" tier, with additional cover for a laptop, so seemingly identical cover BUT my experience of MPI has so far been one of indifference.

After dislocating my shoulder, and phone calls from both myself and my wife MPI very reluctantly agreed to liaise with the pisteurs to guarantee payment for rescue (on piste).
MPI wouldn't liaise with the medical centre where my shoulder was reduced, so I paid for all of that out of my own pocket. Whilst the expenses weren't huge, It's lucky that I was in a position to do that.
I kept all of the invoices,receipts and medical reports, and electronic copies were sent by my wife either that day or on the day after, and the original hard copies were posted with the claims form soon after.
MPI then asked for card receipts and bank statements to prove that the invoices have been paid - these were sent as both electronic and "hard" copies
Further documents (i.e eurotunnel booking info) were then required by MPI as "evidence of travel"
Soon after the injury MPI advised me that any further treatment to my shoulder would have to be provided in a public facility. Despite clear allocation for 10 sessions of physiotherapy in the policy wording, MPI seem unable to give me a clear answer as to whether or where this can be provided (i'm still in France). I'm having physiotherapy anyway, but whether MPI will reimburse this remains to be seen.
More than a month has gone by since the injury, and I have provided all requested documentation promptly but I still haven't had any reimbursement of any costs incurred.
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@johnE, I'm not sure what you mean?

What I mean is that the UK is leaving the EU, and it does not necessarily mean that the EHIC scheme will end for the UK...as it is not an EU dependendent membership, as evidenced by Switzerland.
As you say Switzerland is in Europe, but it is not in the EU.
The same will soon(ish) be true for the UK.

I'll say it here: I predict that we will retain membership of the EHIC scheme (based on no evidence, just a belief that pragmatism will prevail)
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