Don’t even think about going without adequate travel insurance. My husband was diagnosed with Myeloma in France 3 years ago. Luckily we had good travel insurance which covered the circa £20k for the air ambulance to fly him back to hospital in the UK. The EHIC wouldn’t have covered that and it would only have covered a percentage of the cost of his stay in hospital for 3 weeks (including time in intensive care) and all the scans and biopsies that were done there.
It also covered my expenses for staying on with him in France for 2 extra weeks. At one point they thought his spinal cord was compromised by his fractured vertebrae and this could have meant a transfer to a specialised hospital and several more weeks in France for us both. Luckily this wasn’t necessary
However it’s not only the frightening expense if you get ill while uninsured it’s the fact that the insurerer also does all the organisation – of the air ambulance, the liaising between the French and receiving British hospital, the translation of medical notes for the British doctors, etc. It was bad enough to have a very ill husband in a country where our language skills were pretty poor but I simply don’t know how I could have organised getting him back to hospital in the UK with only my iPhone.
Plus myeloma is unpredictable. Unfortunately although his myeloma is still in remission after a SCT 2 and a half years ago he’s just become suddenly very ill again and been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia caused by the myeloma treatment. That was something we didn’t expect.
The EHIC card is really not adequate by itself for travel abroad
