What’s one of the worst things that can happen to baby boomers on a trip? Being stranded due to a medical emergency is my top pick. If this is one of your worries, this MedjetAssist review will be of interest to you.
What is a Medical Evacuation Program?
You’re bicycling through a French vineyard. Splat! You just fell down and broke a leg. At the hospital, the doctor says that the injury requires a full leg cast. Uh-oh.
The full leg cast means that you can’t fly on a commercial airliner. But all you want to do is go home to doctors that you know and trust. What do you do—spend thousands of dollars waiting it out in France—or spend thousands of dollars on a medical transport home?
If you had joined a medical evacuation program like MedjetAssist before leaving on the trip, you would have been picked up from the French hospital and delivered to the hospital of your choice at home.
A medical evacuation program isn’t technically insurance. Instead, it’s a yearly membership that provides medical transportation to travelers in case of an accident or illness that is serious enough to require hospitalization. It can be purchased for one person or there are memberships that cover couples or entire families.
My MedjetAssist Review
There’s a warm spot in my heart for MedjetAssist because the company rescued me from a medical emergency in Switzerland. Whenever I attend travel conferences or AARP’s Life@50+ events, I stop by their booth to say hi.
I like to tease my MedjetAssist friends by saying that I’m a walking talking commercial for them. And I’m happy to share the experience with anyone who will listen.
In December 2012, Alan and I were enjoying a lovely Rhine River Christmas markets cruise. We had just completed the river portion of our trip and had begun a 3-day land extension in Lucerne, Switzerland—the part of the trip that I was most excited about. But all I remember is feeling miserable posing in front of the Lion of Lucerne and hoping that I could walk back to the hotel.
A bad back sends me to a Swiss hospital
The next morning, a Friday, I woke up in the Hotel Schweizerhof Lucerne and realized that I could not get out of bed. With Alan’s help, I walked the few, excruciatingly painful steps across the floor to the bathroom. Returning to the bed, I curled up into a ball and cried.
My back had been talking to me for days: first a whisper, then a nagging reminder during most of my waking hours and finally shouting for my attention that morning in Lucerne. My back was finally saying, “Pay attention. There’s something wrong with me. Don’t even think about powering your way through this.”
Since we were on tour with our travel agents, Alan alerted them. They put a plan in motion to deliver me to a hospital.
Once I was rolled through the hospital’s doorway and settled into a semi-private room, our travel agents worked the phones on my behalf, calling MedjetAssist to arrange transport back to the U.S., as well as alerting CSA, our travel insurance provider.
MedjetAssist brought me home
On Saturday morning, the day after I had been admitted to the hospital, a take-charge travel nurse, Debbie Perdomo, bounced into my room to begin the arrangements for taking me home. I listened to her familiar southern drawl (it turns out that we both grew up in the South) as she conferenced with the nurses, some of whom did not speak any English, about my medications.
My injury did not require transport in a medical evacuation jet. Instead MedjetAssist arranged for business class travel for me and economy for Alan. By Sunday, Debbie was accompanying us through our day of travel, after arranging car services to and from the airports as well as wheelchair access. She also kept me safely medicated so that I could tolerate the journey home. And she tried to keep Alan from worrying.
After traveling for almost 24 hours, Debbie said goodbye to us at St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula, Montana. The cost? Not a single penny out of pocket for the medical transport home.
What would have happened without MedjetAssist?
What would have happened without my MedjetAssist membership? Our travel insurance policy had already done it’s job, delivering me to the closest acceptable hospital. How much money would I have spent before making it home?
There’s a wait and see attitude about back injuries in much of the medical community. After an MRI diagnosed a herniated disc in my lower back, the Swiss physician advised the wait and see approach.
Hmm, hang around in an expensive Swiss hotel waiting for who knows how long until I would be able to fly home? In my case, that would have been the wrong approach. Once I returned to the U.S., my neurosurgeon discovered that I had developed a drop foot from the herniated disc. He ordered immediate surgery to avoid any further nerve damage.
Alan and I have belonged to MedjetAssist for years, although we sometimes let the membership lapse between major trips. Of course Alan always complained when I insisted on renewing the coverage.
After our Swiss experience, Alan told me, “I’ll never again complain about renewing the MedjetAssist membership. What would we have done without them?”
Medjet Membership Options
Since we first joined the program, Medjet has developed several options for travelers to purchase. Here’s an easy comparison chart.
- Short-term coverage for 8 to 30 days (under age 75).
- Annual membership for individuals or families (up to age 75 with less than 90 consecutive days abroad) that covers international and domestic travel. This is the one that we currently purchase.
- Diamond memberships for those travelers between 75 and 84 years of age.
- Expatriate members if you live and work abroad from 180 to 365 days a year.
- Domestic memberships if you’re traveling in the U.S. contiguous 48 states.
There are also options for collegiates, motorcycle enthusiasts and corporations or groups.
If you’re looking for the Cadillac of medical transportation programs, consider MedjetHorizon. Besides enhanced medical evacuation, benefits also include travel security services, a crisis response network and up to $60,000 emergency medical advance when services are required to be paid up front.
Would you risk thousands of dollars for a medical evacuation or pay the nominal MedjetAssist yearly membership fee? The decision is a no-brainer for us.
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