Medicare coverage while travelling

2gypsies wrote:

Murphsmom wrote:
Remember that Medicare does not cover you while you are out of the country. My cousin's husband learned that the hard way. Broke his leg on a trip to Canada, which turned out to be an expensive proposition without a medigap policy.

There are certain instances when Medicare does cover. I would think a broken leg would be an emergency.

https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/travel-need-health-care-outside-us.html

A broken leg is an emergency, but is only covered when traveling on a direct route between Alaska and another US state. As folks have discovered - Medicare doesn't consider a caravan trip or other trip making anything but a straight run a 'direct route'.

Even then - the patient will have to pay the Canadian bills, and file for reimbursement with Medicare, which may or may not pay the full charges. Likely not.

One thing many folks don't realize is that traveling on a cruise ship of non-US registry - even only between two US ports - Medicare does not provide any coverage if the health care is provided outside US waters. Our 'Travel Insurance' covered such an eventuality when we bought our first cruise tickets.

I've found foreign travel specific health coverage essential.