Policy coverage: Check your facts before travelling

Has this cold weather got you thinking about escaping for a week away somewhere warm? If you’re pregnant, you may want to reconsider leaving the country, no matter how bad this winter gets.

Most travel insurance policies (but not all) will cover pregnant women up to the 30-32 week mark. The unborn baby, however, may not be covered at all.

After a lot of searching, I could not find a single insurance provider that will fully cover a premature baby if born outside of your home province or country. In addition to the medical risks of travelling while pregnant, you need to consider these financial risks too.

For example, one insurance provider lists other exclusions as including:

• “If a dependent child is born while the child’s mother is outside of her province of residence, the dependent child will not be insured with respect to that trip.”

This, of course, is buried deep inside of the fine print, well below the line that reads “Pregnancy of the covered person and premature birth and complications arising from the pregnancy within eight weeks preceding the expected date of delivery.” This confusing wording leads many to believe that their coverage is adequate as long as they haven’t reached the last eight weeks before their due date. They don’t find out the real story until it’s too late.

A few years ago, a couple from Saskatchewan went to Hawaii while she was 6 months pregnant and ended up facing more than $950,000 in medical bills after going into labour and giving birth to a premature baby girl that required a two-month stay in the neonatal ICU. The new mother had purchased travel medical insurance before her trip and had been given the “green light” to go from her doctor.

While frustrated and unable to pay the bill, the insurance company had every right to deny the claim. The policy did state that an unborn child is only covered to a maximum of $30,000. The couple felt that the insurance company should pay since they had called their doctor first to confirm it was OK to travel, but their family doctor had only been referring to her medical ability to go away.

If you think that this kind of extreme case only applies to travelling in the U.S. where medical bills are often outrageous, consider the story of an Australian couple visiting Vancouver in 2011 who had a very similar story. Their daughter was born three months early during a trip to Canada and had to spend three months in the neonatal ICU. They also had travel insurance but again it did not cover an unborn child. Their bill from their stay with the lower cost Canadian medical system: Almost $1 million.

When considering travelling during a pregnancy, many people take some steps to consult with their doctor, check on airline policies and even buy travel insurance. But before you pack your bags, take a second look at what it may cost you and decide if this trip is really worth it. Starting a new family off in bankruptcy doesn’t sound like a fair trade for a few days of sunshine.