One of the potential customers told us that his mother in India has been diagnosed with cancer. And he would like to bring her to the US for cancer treatment. He is looking for visitors insurance that would cover her treatment.

Obviously, there is no such insurance plan that would cover any expenses if you would like to bring someone to the US for cancer treatment.

No insurance company will take your few hundred dollars just so that you can immediately claim hundreds of thousands of dollars. Insurance is for future, unpredictable, unknown risks and not for guaranteed loss. No visitors insurance company can possibly afford to cover such treatments. No company will be in business if they did that.

Our best advice to him would be that she should get treated in India. For a small fraction of the cost, there are good medical facilities available in India. e.g., Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, India. I am personally aware of excellent treatment in that hospital for my own close family member.

His reasoning is that she is not from Mumbai. Well, I just gave one example I personally knew. There are other good hospitals in other parts of the country. If not locally available, she can certainly travel to the part of India which is convenient to her and proper treatment is available. If he has other relatives in India, they can take care of her.

However, he said that he would like to take care of her while she is going through treatment. Well, in that case, he should travel to India and be with her.

He argued that he has his job here and his immediate family and he can't leave all that for few months and go to India for her mother's treatment.

He further argued that he is his parents' only son, and it is his duty to take care of his parents. That is absolutely fine. However, someone else should not have to pay for it to fulfill your duties.

Of course, one option is that he can get his mother a visitors visa for medical treatment and make sure that he has hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting in the bank for that treatment. It is possible in that case for her to get treated in the US. But he said he neither has that kind of money nor he would like to spend it even if he had.

Well, for all of his conveniences, he wants someone else (insurance company) to pay for it and take care of it so that he can continue his job and keep earning $$, be with his immediate family and also wants someone else to pay for her mother's treatment. Well, that is definitely not going to happen.

He simply has unrealistic expectations. He will have to make some compromises somewhere.

Note: Even though this article describes cancer treatment, the same logic would apply for anything you would already like to get done such as heart surgery, cataract surgery, knee surgery or anything where the insurance company would definitely lose money.