Most travel insurance is built for someone who eats bad shellfish in Cancun and needs a refund on a missed flight home. It is not built for a family packing a suction machine, a month of feeding pump supplies, and a backup oxygen concentrator into a rental car (and that’s before you’ve even cleared security with all of it). Read the fine print on a standard policy and you’ll find it was never written with your trip in mind.
That doesn’t mean travel insurance is useless for medical families. It means you have to read past the marketing page and ask different questions than the policy is set up to answer.
Pre-existing condition coverage is the highest priority
This is the add-on waiver that decides whether a policy is even worth buying. Most travel insurance companies will only cover a pre-existing condition if it has been “stable” for a set number of days before you buy the policy, usually somewhere between 60 and 180 days depending on the company.
Stable means no new diagnosis, no medication dosage change, no hospitalization, no ER visit related to the condition during that window. If your child’s care plan shifted three weeks ago because of a med change or a new piece of equipment, that can reset the clock on a policy you thought already covered you.
Before you buy anything, find the exact lookback period in writing and ask what specifically would count as a change. Don’t take “yes we have a pre-existing conditions waiver” at face value. Ask what stable means to them, not what it means to you.
Cancel For Any Reason matters more here than almost anywhere else
Standard trip cancellation coverage has a short list of approved reasons: death in the family, jury duty, severe weather, a few others. “My kid’s oxygen needs changed this week” is not on that list. Neither is “we got moved to a different specialist appointment” or “the home nursing schedule fell through and we can’t leave.”
Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) is the add-on that actually fits how medical families live. It costs more, usually has to be purchased within 14 to 21 days of your initial trip deposit, and only reimburses a percentage of your trip cost instead of the full amount. It is also one of the only ways to protect a trip when the thing that derails it isn’t on anyone’s approved list.
Check what “medical evacuation” actually means for your equipment
Every travel insurance policy advertises medical evacuation coverage. Fewer of them define it the way you need it defined. Standard evacuation language usually means transport to the nearest adequate hospital. For a family that needs a hospital capable of managing a trach, a vent, or a feeding pump the same way your home team does, “nearest adequate” and “actually equipped” are not the same thing.
Ask directly: does this policy cover transport to a facility that can manage my child’s specific equipment, even if that means passing a closer hospital that can’t? That single question filters out a lot of policies fast.
Equipment coverage is not the same as baggage coverage
Most policies bundle medical equipment into the same baggage and personal effects category as clothes and toiletries, with low per-item caps and exclusions buried in the definitions section. A feeding pump, a portable oxygen concentrator, or anything for medication administration, these are not luggage. They’re the reason the trip is possible at all.
Ask whether durable medical equipment is covered separately from baggage, what the per-item limit actually is, and whether loss, damage, and theft are all covered or just some of them. If the answer is vague, that’s your answer.
The assistance line should be useful, not just available
Every policy lists a 24/7 assistance number. What matters is what that number can actually do. Can they help locate equivalent replacement equipment in an unfamiliar city? Can they connect you to a specialist who understands your child’s underlying condition, not just a general practitioner? A phone number that exists is different from a phone number that helps.
Talk to your child’s care team before you buy
Before you commit to a policy, especially one tied to evacuation or equipment coverage, your child’s medical team should weigh in on what level of care equivalency actually matters for your destination. They know what “equipped to manage this” looks like in practice. You’re buying insurance based on their answer, not a guess of what might work.
Where to actually start comparing
Comparison marketplaces like Squaremouth let you put multiple providers side by side instead of reading five separate sales pages and trying to remember which one mentioned CFAR. It won’t ask the equipment-specific questions for you, but it narrows the field fast enough that you’re not starting from zero.
We’re still figuring this out as we travel more, the same as you (especially if this is your first trip away from home). But every policy gets easier to evaluate once you know which questions the marketing page is hoping you won’t ask.
This post is NOT insurance coverage or medical advice. Read your specific policy’s exclusions in full before you buy, and loop in your child’s care team on anything related to your family’s needs.
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