When you go on a cruise vacation, you typically have to take a flight to the city where the port of departure is located. Once underway, shore excursions and other off-ship activities are often involved. Due to all of the traveling involved in a cruise vacation, it is wise to consider purchasing travel insurance. A good travel insurance plan can include a variety of coverages for different situations before and during the cruise.

However, if you aren't worried about benefits like trip cancellation coverage that are commonly included in travel insurance plans, you can purchase cruise medical insurance instead. A cruise medical insurance plan can be considerably cheaper and offers many of the same benefits as cruise travel insurance. 

Benefits of Cruise Medical Insurance

Cruise medical insurance provides a wide variety of coverage, including but not limited to:

Emergency Medical Coverage

Medical coverage is obviously the most important part of cruise medical insurance.

Your domestic health insurance plan may not provide any coverage outside your home country. Even if it does, you may be subject to high deductibles, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket expenses. Additionally, your domestic insurance provider may not be used to handling medical emergencies abroad and/or in foreign languages.

Emergency medical coverage will generally provide coverage if you require medical treatment during your trip, including onboard in the ship's medical facility and on shore at a treatment facility.

Emergency Medical Evacuation

If you were to get sick or injured on a cruise, treatment options on the ship itself will be limited. You might need to be evacuated to the nearest place where adequate care can be given. An airlift from a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean is very expensive, ranging from $10,000 to $50,000, and possibly even more.

A cruise medical insurance plan will typically provide a high amount of emergency medical evacuation coverage.

In any case, it is best to be very careful during shore excursions that are a part of your cruise. If you are planning to participate in any hazardous sports activities—such as ziplining, water skiing, jet skiing, parasailing, and more—make sure to purchase cruise medical insurance that covers that activity, which is usually available optionally at an additional cost. The activities that are included in and excluded from coverage will be listed in the policy certificate wording, which is available for you to read on this website prior to purchasing any plan.

Repatriation of Remains

If any of the insureds were to pass away while on the trip, cruise medical insurance can provide coverage for repatriation of mortal remains to the home country.

Obviously, no one wants to think about death before embarking on a fun-filled cruise, but it is better to be safe than sorry. If you have a plan in place for the unthinkable, it will be one less thing to worry about when you are dealing with the emotions and grief of a loved one's passing.

Local Ambulance

If you get injured on land at one of the ports your cruise ship visits, you won't have a car. In such cases, the cruise medical insurance local ambulance benefit can prove to be helpful to get you to the hospital.

Other Benefits

Cruise medical insurance also provides benefits like trip delay, accidental death and dismemberment, loss of checked luggage, and more.

As the exact coverage limits, benefits, and exclusions vary by the cruise medical insurance policy you choose to purchase, it is best to look at multiple insurance policies and compare them side by side—which you can easily do on this website.