Don’t forget to invest in your health before takeoff

You’re out somewhere in your hometown and you twist an ankle, fall and, in the process, break an arm or a leg or your hip — or worse. Or suddenly you show signs of some serious illness.

It’s a terrible experience, but at least you are close to home and you know whom to turn to for help — you can depend on a family doctor, and there’s probably a nearby hospital to care for your needs.

What if you were far from home, in one of the places I’ve been in recent years — the Andes of Peru, out-of-the-way islands of the South Pacific, remote areas of China or off the beaten path in Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Alaska and parts of Africa, Australia, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia?

Many people who agonize over such small details as how many pairs of shoes to take on their vacation somehow forget to plan for something that is far more important: What would you do if you had a medical emergency during your trip and needed to be medically evacuated?

A medical evacuation could cost dearly. It’s very expensive — typically tens of thousands of dollars, frequently topping $50,000 and sometimes even $100,000. It could devastate your family’s finances. Yet very few people are covered against this possibility.

Most medical policies, HMO and PPO health plans provide no coverage, or extremely limited coverage, for these expenses. Medicare does not cover you outside the United States, nor do most Medicare supplements. If you believe one of your insurance policies or premium credit card supplements guarantees you medical evacuation, you would be wise to read the fine print very carefully.

Most likely every dollar, or nearly every dollar, of such an enormous expense would have to come out of your pocket.

Travelers who knowingly or unknowingly expose themselves to the risk of incurring an enormous bill for a medical evacuation make a big mistake. So do would-be travelers who decide not to visit their dream destinations because they have heard horror tales about people who have had to pay out large sums for a medical evacuation.

The smart thing to do is what highly experienced, knowledgeable world travelers do: Be certain that you have a travel protection plan that does what you want it to do.

Read the fine print very carefully and make sure you understand any disclaimers. Most plans have a cap, often set quite low, making you responsible for any expense in excess of the cap. Most simply guarantee getting you to the nearest medical center, a loophole scary to anyone who has seen what can pass for a medical facility in many parts of the world.

More likely, such coverage will be marketed shrewdly as guaranteeing to get you to the closest appropriate medical center or the closest adequate medical center. Problem is: What the policy issuers might consider appropriate or adequate might not fit your definition — in which case it is tough luck for you.

Some excellent travel protection plans are available at reasonable costs and deliver outstanding medical evacuation services and, in some cases, considerably more. Anyone who travels anywhere — even if only to places fairly close to home — should check into getting such protection. This is especially true for anyone with health concerns or anyone traveling to a destination that qualifies as adventure travel.

Go on the web, use a search engine such as Google and enter the phrase “medical evacuation,” and then do your own evaluation of the possibilities to determine which best matches what you want.

One of the possibilities you will come across is the one my wife and I purchased: MedjetAssist. It’s a perfect solution for our needs, giving us real peace of mind while we are traveling. No other plan gives all that MedjetAssist does; few others even come close.

The cost for an annual membership is $205 per person or $325 per family. Or you can sign up for a short-term plan: seven days for $75 per person ($140 per family), 14 days for $95 ($175 per family), or 21-days for $120 ($220 per family).

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