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The Wisdom of Purchasing Medical Evacuation InsuranceDid you know that one overseas medical evacuation service performed over 14,000 emergency medical missions in just one year? A seasoned international traveler would always consider the risks of traveling without medical evacuation insurance. Consider yourself lucky if you have not had a medical emergency on any of your international trips. But how long can your luck hold out? Medical evacuations occur more frequently than we think. Did you know that one overseas medical evacuation service performed over 14,000 emergency medical missions in just one year? Do the math and you will see that that averages out to about 35 evacuations a day! A seasoned international traveler would always consider the risks of traveling without medical evacuation insurance. A popular tourist activity is going on cruises. There are more than five million of them each year that leave from US ports. And most of them do not have medical evacuation coverage on their health insurance plan. Furthermore, they don’t think to buy travel insurance. What can go wrong on a cruise? A recent study conducted by the American Medical Association revealed that on average 20 passengers die each year aboard cruise liners, mainly due to heart attacks. If these vacationers had been able to get to good health facilities quickly via air evacuation, most of them could have lived. Most insurance companies will subcontract companies that only do medical evacuations. To determine whether or not a medical evacuation is unavoidable, the insurance company will get counsel from four sources: their agency doctors, their own personnel that specialize in this field, the one needing medical assistance or his/her representative, and a health specialist on the ground who is caring for the patient. Information from all four sources is vital in making a good decision. The insurance companies present the client with a call-collect number in order to coordinate and discuss medical evacuation. In order to have a medical evacuation funded, it is necessary to have it coordinated through and by the insurance company. They do this in order to keep insurance costs down by preventing unnecessary emergency evacuations. If the insurance companies manage the medical evacuation, this will also help maintain lower cost for the insured. Keeping the costs down helps everyone because it permits insurance companies to minimize rate-ups on health insurance premiums . When it is deemed necessary, an insurance company will get a plane to fly in to evacuate the patient. It might also arrange for several seats on a civilian carrier. Sometimes it will send along medical personnel to accompany the one being evacuated. You are in reliable hands. Insurance companies work with emergency services that are experts in their field. Not only that, but they retain staff that work solely on these situations. They take emergency calls from all over the world, twenty-four hours a day Article Tags: Medical Evacuation, Insurance Companies Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHORJeff Gulleson is President of Good Neighbor Insurance. Good Neighbor Insurance represents 10 international health insurance companies and provides international health and travel insurance for every country in the world.
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