Travel insurance to Jamaica

[skibum9x99]

Last year in January, I woke up at 2:00 AM having severe chest pain, up and down both arms, and between my shoulder blades. Yep, a heart attack which my Nitro didn't even help. The resort which we were staying at the time called in the nurse, who called in the Dr., who called the ambulance. I received great care but there's a catch, you have to pay everything upfront. Now the ride back to Montego Bay was awful, even while on a good Morphine buzz. There are a couple Hospitals in Montego Bay and the Dr. recommended the privately owned Hospiten. No racial bias applied, he said because I was white and an American I could sit in the waiting room for hours. The Hospiten was no pick-nick either as they wanted $6000.00 (per day) up front to cross the threshold. I was transferred into the ICU and had two Dr.'s assigned to me, the Dr. in charge of the ICU and the Dr. of Cardiology. (No to be sexist, but both were women and Cuban) Let me tell you, I would hire these ladies stateside in a heartbeat (no pun intended). I received excellent care for the two days I spent in the ICU, however the hospital didn't have a Cath-Lab for Angioplasty/Stent insertion. The insurance company would only pay for ground transportation to Kingston from Montego Bay. The other option was to hire a Medivac Jet to take me to Ft Lauderdale, which we opted to do. Again, payment all up front. ($$$$) Once we landed in the US my personal insurance kicked in. (The lady on the phone told my wife that we were out of network- lol) I received excellent care in Ft Lauderdale. All in all, we were fortunate to have the funds to cover the costs and in the end we were reimbursed most of the costs except for our return airfare home. My insurance was my personal plan, and I always buy the recommended insurance from Delta Airlines, and we bought insurance for the resort. All of these have an emergency medical clause which I recommend reading through before you leave and talk to your insurance provider to see what is covered. You can go the credit card route, but I'll tell you it was north of 35K to take care of this. + or - depending on how bad you are. Also let your bank know where you are going in case you need to add funds to your account, and have a phone number available too as we had to get the President of our bank to move the funds around. It sucked, but we are heading back January 14, as the Resort gave us the credit that we didn't use last year.