A man who was traveling from Vancouver, B.C. to Mexico finds himself facing a six-figure medical bill that keeps getting bigger, as he joins the ranks of those who have denied insurance claims.
Australian Ryan Maudlen and Austrian Katharina Reigl – who had lived in Vancouver for two years before making the trip south to Mexico – had started a journey that had taken them to Alaska and back, with plans to travel to South America with their friend Ryan Mulligan.
“Now they're in the predicament they're in,” Mulligan told
CTV Vancouver, the trip having been cut short in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
Maudlen, who has Crohn's disease, was rushed to hospital in Playa del Carmen on Monday when a perforation of his intestines allowed all the liquid in his stomach to spill throughout his body.
Suffering from blood poisoning, Maudlen was placed in a medically induced coma.
With medical bills of more than $100,000 and growing daily, it would cost another $100,000 to airlift him back to Australia, where he has health coverage.
According to his girlfriend Reigl, Maudlen had bought travel insurance online from a company in the U.K. before their trip. When Maudlen first fell ill, the insurance company said they'd cover his medical bills, but later reversed its position, according to Reigl.
“The insurance said they'd cover it, that's why they let him into the hospital, and two days later they backed out,” Reigl told
CTV.
Reigl said she believes his claim was denied because Maudlen had a pre-existing condition, and doesn’t think he disclosed that he had Crohn's when purchasing the policy online.
Although most Canadian plans do cover people under the age of 60, even if they don't disclose any pre-existing conditions, says Alex Bittner, president of the Travel Health Insurance Association of Canada, most British plans don't cover pre-existing conditions.
Bittner said that even if Canadians have chronic conditions, they are usually covered by Canadian insurance policies, as long as their conditions are stable – but he did tell Insurance Business that it is crucial for applicants to fill out forms accurately to ensure that they are covered. (continued.)
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“Responding accurately to medical forms is the best way to have a carefree holiday and ensure that unexpected medical expenses will be covered by insurance,” says Bittner. “Provincial health plans only pay for approximately 9 per cent of out-of-country medical costs. If there is a medical questionnaire, it needs to be taken seriously.”
It is the second headline-grabbing case of denied travel medical insurance, coming on the heels of Jennifer Huculak’s story, who was hit with a $950,000 medical bill after she went into premature labour while on holiday in Hawaii, resulting in a three-month hospital stay.
The couple had bought travel insurance from Saskatchewan Blue Cross before they left, but the company denied their claim, stating that Huculak had a pre-existing condition.
The company also said their insurance had expired while Huculak was in hospital.
In Maudlen's case, his parents have mortgaged their home in Australia to help pay some of the bill. His friends in Vancouver have raised more than $80,000 in a crowdfunding campaign to help out.
Also read: 'Insurance is designed to pay claims'
