Why is travel insurance so expensive over 70, and what can I do about it?

Mainstream insurers write to a standard risk profile and price anything outside it defensively. That is why a quote from a comparison site can look absurd for a seventy-five-year-old with a controlled heart condition while a specialist writes the same person sensibly. The market is there; the default route does not find it.

Safety

Step by step

1. Understand what is actually being priced.Two things: the medical section, which is nearly all of the cost, and the destination, because treatment costs in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean dominate the risk. Age and declared conditions raise the expected medical claim, and everything else on the policy is small by comparison.
2. Go to specialist insurers directly.Insurers who write over-70s and medical travel cover as their main business price conditions on the medical facts rather than by declining or loading heavily. Comparison sites often exclude them, so search for them specifically.
3. Split by destination rather than buying one worldwide policy.If most trips are European and one is not, a European annual policy plus one single-trip worldwide policy is frequently much cheaper than worldwide annual cover for the year.
4. Raise the excess deliberately.A higher excess reduces the premium and is a rational trade when the thing you are insuring against is a very large medical bill rather than a mislaid suitcase. Check the excess is per person per section so you know the worst case.
5. Check what you already have.A packaged bank account, a union or professional association scheme, a former employer scheme, or an existing insurer loyalty product may already include travel cover — but check the upper age limit, which is exactly where these tend to stop.
6. Declare everything, then compare on the same declarations.Get quotes with the identical, complete declaration each time. A cheaper quote obtained by declaring less is not cheaper, it is a different and much worse product.
7. Ask what is excluded, not just what it costs.A cheap quote that excludes the cardiac condition you have is worthless for the risk you are actually carrying. Compare the exclusions alongside the price.

Tips

• Some insurers have no upper age limit at all. Those are the ones to find, because policies with a limit often stop mid-year rather than at renewal.
• If a condition has recently changed — a new diagnosis, a recent procedure, an awaited result — the price is at its worst while it is unresolved. Where the trip allows, waiting until the picture is settled can change the quote considerably.
• A GHIC still helps. It does not replace insurance, but in the countries that accept it, it reduces what the policy has to pay and therefore how bad an uninsured gap would be.

Common mistakes

• Buying the cheapest quote from a comparison site without reading the exclusions — Comparison sites rank on price, and the cheapest quote for an older traveller is frequently the one that has excluded the relevant condition.
• Travelling without cover for a short European trip — The health card covers state treatment on local terms and pays nothing towards repatriation, which is the cost that actually ruins people.

Questions people ask