Compass Whistlethe musings of two whirled travelers

This week I made another step in the process towards our escape from reality and purchased travel insurance that covers medical emergencies while we’re abroad.

When I was a twenty-something rebel, travel medical insurance wouldn’t have really been a major concern.  I would have been too focused on how to have the most fun.  But as I’ve gotten past the big three-oh mark my mind plays terrible tricks on me: I constantly imagine the worst case scenarios and focus on how I can most get hurt while trying to have said fun.

To ease my mind, I decided to purchase medical insurance that covers us even when we’re in ridiculous places (Nepal) doing ridiculous things (hiking to Everest base camp).  We have purchased private medical insurance for ourselves while we are in the US (an exciting experience for another blog post), but we felt that having a separate international emergency medical policy that covers medical evacuation and repatriation, if necessary, would be eminently prudent.

I began my search at a very convenient and easy-to-use website: www.squaremouth.com

Squaremouth provides an aggregation service that lets you search for travel insurance policies based on your specific conditions and requirements, lets you compare policies side-by-side in a uniform fashion, and then sends you directly to the specific insurer to purchase your policy once you’ve decided.  They also provide very useful information about the potential insurers like the AM Best Rating (the AM Best Company is a credit rating agency that reviews the financial strength and credit worthiness of the underwriting agencies i.e. will this company be able to pay if I need to make a claim?).  This information proves useful when comparing two nearly identical policies side by side, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t ease my mind knowing that the company insuring my trip has a billion dollars in assets backing them up.

As an aggregating website, like Kayak or Orbitz for travel, Squaremouth carries some clout with the insuring companies.  If a client has any issues with an insurer and their complaint isn’t resolved to Squaremouth’s standards, Squaremouth claims to stop selling policies for that insurer.  That keeps insurance companies at the top of their game on the customer service side.

I was very pleased with the policy I was able to purchase via Squaremouth in price, coverage, and ease of transaction, and I would highly recommend their website to anyone looking to purchase travel or emergency medical insurance for an upcoming trip.  Just having the printed policy on my nightstand helps me sleep easier now.  It could literally be a lifesaver while we’re abroad.