Insurance

Practicalities Getting Organised Insurance The most basic 

There is a reciprocal health treatment agreement between Department of Health, available from the Post Office.

This contains the form E111, just one copy of which will cover all members of a family, before getting it stamped at the counter. You are eligible to use the form if you are ordinarily resident in the UK, and are a national of the UK or other EEA country.

While you don't have to pay for this, the reciprocal agreement only covers 50-plus countries, and the services offered in most of them are not equivalent to those of the NHS.

Not only may it be very difficult to find a practitioner who works within the state system, you may well have to pay a high proportion of the costs anyway. You could even, in an emergency, be sent across a border for treatment to a country where there is no similar reciprocal arrangement in place.

Cover does not include the cost of bringing a patient back to the UK in the event of serious illness.

In view of this, especially when travelling with children, and particularly when travelling to North America, Switzerland, Africa, Asia and most of the Caribbean, at least medical insurance is advisable.

Insurance may be provided by your credit card if you used it to pay for the holiday, but this may be limited to travel accident insurance and may only cover the journey, and possibly just the cardholder as a fare-paying passenger. There may also be personal accident cover, but the level of this varies. There might also be some medical insurance for your family but you will have to check with your card issuer for details. Medical emergency cover, personal possessions cover and personal accident cover for non-card holders will probably not be included. This may be available on a platinum card or equivalent, including those which charge an annual fee for this kind of extra service.