Sick mother means no travel insurance

Woman didn't qualify for standard flight insurance because of her mother's pre-existing health condition.

March 22, 2010 at 3:24PM

Over the past year, hundreds of you have asked Whistleblower for help. While we can't investigate each tip, we want to share more of what you tell us. In 2009, we started publishing a few tips each week to stimulate online discussion and create ways for our readers to help each other. Unlike our news stories, we have not verified this information. If you have a tip, send it to whistleblower@startribune.com.

After booking a flight to South Carolina, a woman decided to buy flight insurance because her mother had recently been placed in hospice. The insurance agent told her that she didn't qualify for standard coverage because she had a pre-existing condition.

"When I asked her what she meant, she stated that I had the pre-existing condition of having a mother with a pre-existing condition and that that disqualified me," she wrote to Whistleblower.

The woman said the agent told her that it was a standard exemption. The agent offered a more expensive package for "high-risk" circumstances, but the woman didn't buy it. She also asked the agent what would have happened if she wouldn't have shared the information about her mother's grave health and was told that the company would have found out through a death certificate.

"This was clearly a statement of intimidation, as I'm aware of no certificate that says a person dies of hospice," she wrote.

When the woman checked with the state Department of Commerce, which regulates insurers, she was told that as long as the rule was included in the company's underwriting policies, it was legal.

Have you ever had trouble getting flight or travel insurance?

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about the writer

Lora Pabst

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