We are ex-pats who have lived in Malta for two years and are very happy here. However, we decided a holiday was needed. We want to visit Bangkok later in the year. I started looking into the cost of travel, etc last October (2011).

I have been horrified to find that we cannot get travel insurance to cover pre-existing illnesses (diabetes etc), which we both suffer from. I have spoken to every insurance broker and agent on the island (as far as I am aware) and have always been told that there is no one in Malta who offers travel insurance for pre-existing medical conditions, even though I said we were quite happy to pay any extra premium.

I have even tried to do it through the UK but can’t find a company that will cover us so long as we have a Maltese address. This is very alarming given that we are not prepared to travel uninsured (and, surely, no one else is).

The problem even extends to visiting Europe as we always buy full medical insurance to make sure we are covered for cost of air ambulance, accommodation for spouse and all the other expenses that the European health card doesn’t cover, which is for medical treatment only. This means that we cannot go away on holiday and we can’t visit relatives in the UK or friends on the continent. In other words, we cannot leave the island!

This is a huge problem for us and, presumably, for Maltese and other ex-pats as well because there appears to be no way around it.

Does anyone know if there are brokers who offer insurance for pre-existing medical conditions that I haven’t found? If anyone can help us, please let us know.

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