Let me guess how it went. You found a holiday, got excited, then started a quote on one of the big comparison sites. You ticked the box that said you take medication for your heart. Or your diabetes. Or you mentioned the cancer you beat three years ago. And the screen either threw a price that made you gasp – or politely told you “we cannot offer cover.” Sound familiar?
Here is the thing nobody tells you at 35: travel insurance gets complicated the moment your body has a history. And the over-60s are the ones who feel it hardest. I want to walk you through what genuinely matters when you book cover with a pre-existing condition, why the default cheap comparison result so often lets you down, and where a specialist insurer earns its keep. No fear-mongering. Just the parts that actually protect you.
Why do older travellers keep getting refused?
Most price-comparison sites are built to do one thing well. Sort by price. They are brilliant for a 28-year-old going to Spain with nothing to declare. But the algorithms behind many of the cheapest panels quietly screen out anything that smells like risk – and “over 70 with a managed heart condition” reads as pure risk to a machine tuned for the average customer.
So you get one of three outcomes. A flat refusal. A price so high it feels like a punishment. Or – and this is the dangerous one – a cheap policy that “accepts” you but quietly excludes any claim linked to the very condition you were worried about. You only discover the gap when you are in a hospital bed in Florida. That is exactly the situation a specialist insurer like InsureandGo is built to avoid, because it underwrites conditions properly instead of pretending they do not exist.
And here is the bit that genuinely surprised me when I started digging. There is no upper age limit on their cover. None. Eighty-two and heading to Portugal? Seventy-eight and finally taking that cruise? You are not too old to be quoted. That alone rules out a frustration most older travellers have simply accepted as normal.
Declaring your conditions honestly – the part you cannot skip
I know the temptation. You are filling in the medical screening, and there is a quiet voice saying “do I really need to mention the angina? It is under control, the price will jump…” Please, do not listen to it. This is the single most important thing in this whole article.
If you do not declare a condition – asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, a heart condition, a past cancer – and then you make a claim that is even loosely related, the insurer can refuse the whole thing. Not just the medical bit. Sometimes the entire policy. A few pounds saved on the premium becomes a five-figure hospital bill you pay yourself. That is not a risk worth taking at any age.
The good news? Declaring honestly is far less scary with an insurer that actually wants your business. InsureandGo runs specialist medical screening for asthma, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy and heart conditions, so when you tick the honest box you usually get a real quote rather than a wall. You answer the questions, the system prices the actual risk, and you walk away covered for the thing you were most afraid of. Imagine that.
Before you click “buy” – a 60-second checklist
- Have you listed every condition, even the well-managed ones?
- Does the policy actually cover medical claims linked to those conditions?
- What is the medical expenses limit – and is repatriation included?
- Is there a 24/7 emergency line you can ring from abroad?
- Does the geographic region match where you are really going (USA costs more for a reason)?
The one number that matters more than the premium
Want to know the figure I now check before anything else? The medical expenses limit. Not the price. The cover ceiling.
Here is why it is the line that matters. A serious medical emergency abroad does not cost hundreds. It costs tens of thousands, sometimes far more. An air ambulance home from the United States can run past 50,000 on its own. So when a policy caps medical cover at, say, 2 million, that sounds enormous until you realise a complicated cardiac event plus repatriation can eat into it fast. This is where the “unlimited” wording genuinely changes the maths.
InsureandGo offers unlimited medical expenses cover and repatriation on its policies, backed by 24/7 worldwide emergency medical assistance. Read that again if you have a heart condition or a cancer history. Unlimited. It means that if the worst happens, the bill is not your problem and getting you home is not a negotiation. For an older traveller, that single feature is worth more than every discount code on the internet combined.
The cheapest policy that excludes your condition is not insurance. It is a souvenir receipt.
Specialist insurer vs the comparison-site default
Could you still find a cheaper number elsewhere? Maybe. I will not pretend price never matters – it does, especially on a pension. But cheap cover that quietly excludes your diabetes is not actually cheaper. It is a gamble dressed up as a saving.
What you are really buying with a specialist is confidence. InsureandGo has been trading for more than 25 years and covered over 27 million travellers, with 99% of customers saying they would recommend it. It has been named a Which? Best Buy three years running and sits at Excellent on Trustpilot, rated 4.8 out of 5 from more than 126,000 reviews. Numbers like that do not guarantee your personal claim, of course – no honest writer would tell you they do. But they tell you the machine behind the policy actually pays out and answers the phone.
There is also a UK-based sales and service team, which sounds like a small thing until you are 73, anxious, and would rather speak to a human than wrestle a chatbot. You can get a quote online in minutes, or pick up the phone. Your call.
Matching the policy to how you actually travel
One more thing the over-60s get wrong, and I include my own parents here. They buy a generic policy and assume it covers everything they do. It rarely does. Booking a cruise? You want cruise cover, which handles cabin confinement and missed ports. Still hitting the slopes at 65 (good for you)? That needs winter sports cover. Golf trips, scuba, the occasional adventurous excursion – each has its own clause.
This is another spot where range matters. InsureandGo covers single-trip, annual multi-trip, cruise, ski, golf, scuba and extreme cover, plus geographic options for Europe, Worldwide, the USA, Australia and more. If you travel three or four times a year, an annual multi-trip policy usually beats buying single-trip cover each time – and you declare your conditions once. Less admin, fewer chances to forget something. That is not nothing when forms make your eyes glaze over.
So, is a specialist worth it after 60?
Honest verdict, the way I would tell a friend. If you are over 60 and you have a condition to declare, stop defaulting to whatever the comparison site spits out first. The no-upper-age-limit policies, the proper medical screening, and the unlimited medical and repatriation cover are not marketing fluff for you – they are the exact three things that determine whether a bad day abroad becomes a manageable scare or a financial catastrophe.
The one honest flaw? You will probably not get the rock-bottom “from” price you see splashed across budget comparison ads. A policy that actually covers a declared heart condition costs more than one that quietly does not, and I would rather you knew that going in. But for what it buys – genuine cover, a real phone line, a payout history that holds up – I think it is money well spent. Peace of mind is a strange thing. You never notice it until the moment you desperately need it.
Get yourself quoted, declare everything, and go enjoy the holiday you have earned.