Chronically ill travellers face medical costs worth millions, advocate warns

Chronically ill people travelling abroad could face personal medical costs of up to 3 million to 4 million Icelandic krónur if they become ill or are injured, according to mbl.is. The warning comes from Gísli Jónasson, a former dean who has lived with motor neurone disease for more than a decade and has long advocated for the MND association in Iceland.

Gísli raised the issue in an email sent to all members of Iceland’s Parliament earlier this month. He said the question of whether lawmakers had finally found the “broad shoulders” to carry the burden arose after he examined amendments to the Health Insurance Act approved by Parliament on June 1, along with the regulation subsequently issued.

Under the changes, people travelling to countries outside the European Economic Area from the turn of the year will no longer be insured against costs resulting from illness or accidents. Iceland Health Insurance will also only pay medical costs at state run hospitals within the EEA.

For healthy people, Gísli wrote, the cost of medical treatment resulting from accidents and illness abroad will in practice be transferred almost entirely from Iceland Health Insurance to insurance companies. Travellers will generally be left with a deductible of between 15,000 and 25,000 krónur.

However, travel insurance policies generally exclude illnesses affecting people with chronic conditions, he said. As a result, chronically ill travellers cannot simply rely on insurance companies to cover the costs.

Gísli said an accompanying spreadsheet showed that, under the amended law and regulation, the deductible for a chronically ill pensioner could reach 1,030,000 krónur. For a chronically ill person who is not a pensioner, he said, the personal cost could reach 3 million to 4 million krónur if the situation became serious.

He said the regulation appeared to address the problem, but that the result was such a stark difference between chronically ill people and those without underlying conditions that it was difficult to believe Parliament had been aware of the consequences when the law was amended. Several members of Parliament have sent him responses, he said.

Gísli has called for the legislative changes to be reviewed.