Why you should always have travel insurance

Monday morning dawned cold, cold and snowy.  Despite it now being theoretically spring it was around -25C and snowing, so neither Mum nor I were keen to go skiing.  Dad and Jason waited until it had warmed up a bit (-18C) and went up together for the afternoon.  Then at 4:30pm or so Dad called to let Mum know that he had had a 'bit of an accident' and was on the way to the hospital with Jason driving and could she call the insurance company and the hospital.  Now for those of you who know how much Jason loves driving, particularly in a huge tank of a 4WD on snow and ice covered roads on the wrong side of the road, you would understand that this fact alone let us know how much Dad must be hurt.  

It turns out he was skiing down a black mogul run and got the turn wrong going over and landing on his shoulder.  He dislocated his shoulder and broke the arm in the process into multiple pieces.  He also tore the ligament in his thumb (on the other hand) completely off the bone.  From Banff he was transferred the 200km to Calgary for surgery to repair his arm and shoulder.   He now has a plate in his shoulder and 7 screws keeping it together.  When I left the hospital he had moved from being miserable and in pain the day before to being bored at having nothing to do.

There are a few raves that came out of this.  The first was for Avis.  The car was supposed to be returned to Calgary but none of the three of us wanted to drive it.  So someone from Banff Avis drove up to our house to pick up the car (he was the only one on duty so had to leave his car here) and said there would be no charge for it.  My parents were insured through the flight centre insurance "Covermore" and I can not recommend them highly enough.  Everytime we called they had all the details of the case on hand, purely based on our surname.  They were incredibly proactive calling the hospital, the surgeon, organising new flights with a business class upgrade for both Mum and Dad.  Our rough calculation is that they have paid out around $50,000 and almost all of this they have paid directly.  They weren't able to pay the Banff hospital directly as Banff refuses to deal with insurance companies but everything else they have taken care of.