Travel insurance
Provincial health insurance pays a fraction of what a hospital in Florida or Arizona charges, and in some provinces it pays almost nothing at all outside Canada. That gap is the entire product.
Your provincial plan stops at the border
A day in an American intensive care unit runs into five figures. Your provincial plan reimburses at the rate it would have paid a hospital at home, which is a small fraction of that, and several provinces have reduced out-of-country coverage close to zero. Nobody discovers this at a good moment.
The second half of the product is the part people actually claim on: cancellation and interruption. A funeral, a storm, a passport that does not arrive.
What it covers
Emergency medical
Hospital, physician, diagnostics, prescriptions and, when it comes to it, the air ambulance home. We place limits of $5 million as a matter of course because the difference in premium between $2 million and $5 million is small and the difference in outcome is not.
Trip cancellation
The money you already spent, back, when a covered reason stops you from going. Bought at the time you make the first non-refundable payment, not the week before you fly.
Trip interruption
Getting you home early and paying for the part of the trip you did not take.
Annual multi-trip
If you leave the country more than twice a year, an annual plan is almost always cheaper than the individual policies. Watch the per-trip day limit, which is the number that catches snowbirds.
Visitors to Canada
Parents visiting for a season, a new arrival waiting out a provincial health plan qualifying period, a work permit holder in their first three months. All insurable, and all commonly uninsured.
Stability periods
The clause that decides most declined travel claims. A pre-existing condition must have been stable for a defined window, usually 90 or 180 days, and a changed dose of an existing prescription can end that window. We check this with you before you buy, out loud.
What it does not cover
An honest policy is read by its exclusions too. These are the ones that cause the most surprises.
- Travel undertaken against a physician’s advice, or after a terminal prognosis.
- A condition that was not stable through the stability period stated in your policy.
- Cancellation for a reason that was known or foreseeable when you bought the policy.
- Extreme sports and, in most contracts, anything with a motor and a race number.
Tell us where, how long and the honest medical picture. We will tell you which insurer will actually pay.
Tell us your province. The rest follows.
A ten minute request, a named broker, and an answer that starts with what your province already covers.