Blue Cross Snowbird Travel Insurance

Blue Cross snowbird travel insurance covers Canadians who spend the winter somewhere warm, for one long stay or for several trips a year with an annual contract. Emergency Medical Care coverage, optional with both products, reimburses usual and reasonable costs incurred following a medical emergency during your trip. Protecto sells this Croix Bleue du Québec plan and helps you before and after you buy, including extensions requested from down south.

What Blue Cross snowbird insurance covers

• Emergency medical care: up to $5,000,000 per person, with an optional deductible.
• Trip Cancellation and Interruption, baggage up to $1,500 and accidental death or dismemberment up to $300,000, depending on the coverages you choose.
• Blue Cross Travel Assistance 24 hours a day: it confirms your coverage and coordinates payment when possible. 1-800-361-6068 from Canada and the US, or 514-286-8411 collect from anywhere else.

One stay or an annual contract

Two Blue Cross products serve snowbirds:

• Single-Trip: covers the exact dates of your stay, from departure to return. You choose the coverages.
• Multi-Trip Annual: covers all your trips outside your province for one year, each up to the maximum length you choose: 4, 8, 17, 31, 60, 90, 120, 150 or 180 days. For 150 or 180 days, you must be 80 or younger. For the others, 85 or younger.

If your stay runs longer than your annual contract’s maximum, you must extend the coverage before you go over. The contract must always cover the whole trip.

Blue Cross requires you to be covered by your province’s health and hospital insurance plan for the whole trip. Check with your provincial plan that your stay does not put that coverage at risk. See also our article Snowbirds: when to buy your insurance.

Eligibility from age 55

On top of being a Canadian resident covered by your provincial plan, at 55 and over you must not:

• have received medical advice not to travel;
• have a terminal medical condition;
• have kidney disease treated with dialysis;
• have been diagnosed with or treated for cancer with metastases in the last 5 years;
• have been hospitalized for a lung condition, or prescribed any type of corticosteroid tablet, including prednisone, in the last 12 months;
• have been prescribed or treated with home oxygen in the last 12 months.

Pre-existing conditions: stability by age

For emergency medical care, a condition that was not stable before your coverage takes effect is excluded:

• 55 to 59, trips of less than 18 days: 6 months of stability;
• 55 to 59 on trips of 18 days or more, and 60 and over: 6 months of stability. Some conditions are also excluded unless your certificate of insurance says otherwise: certain cardiovascular conditions (including pulmonary hypertension) diagnosed or treated at any time in your life, a heart, lung, liver, pancreas or bone marrow transplant, kidney disease in the last 24 months, and cancer (except the exceptions set out in the contract) or certain gastrointestinal conditions in the last 12 months.

For Trip Cancellation and Interruption, the stability period is 3 months at any age.

Stable means, among other things: no new diagnosis, no change in medication or dosage, and no test or treatment pending. Read our guide on what “stable” means before you fill in the health declaration. An inaccurate answer can get the contract cancelled.

Coming home during the winter

With Single-Trip, the trip break lets you come back to your province, for the holidays for example, and leave again without ending the contract. You are not covered on those days and the premium for those days is not refunded. Before you leave again, you must still meet the eligibility criteria. For emergency medical care, if you are 55 or over, a condition that is not stable in the 6 months before you return to your destination is excluded for the rest of the contract. For Trip Cancellation and Interruption, it’s 3 months at any age.

Extending your stay

To extend, contact Protecto, the agent who sold you the contract, before the covered period ends. You must still be eligible, your health must not have changed since you left, and you pay the additional premium. Blue Cross may refuse if you have a claim for the current period. Do not buy the extension from another insurer: that voids your Blue Cross contract for this trip, unless Blue Cross refused the extension.

If you are in hospital on your scheduled return date, coverage is extended at no cost for the length of your stay in hospital and the 24 hours after discharge.

Already covered by another travel insurance plan?

If you are covered for emergency medical care by another insurance company, or by another member of the Canadian Association of Blue Cross Plans, for the first part of your trip, Blue Cross top-up insurance covers emergency medical care for the extra days, up to $5,000,000. It starts the day after your other coverage ends, with no gap between the two. First check that your current insurer allows you to buy the rest elsewhere.

What it costs

According to the policy, the premium is based on age, destination, trip length (or the maximum trip length chosen for Multi-Trip Annual), the product and coverages chosen, the amount insured, the deductible and your answers to the health declaration. If you come home early with no claim, a refund of the unused days is possible, minus a $25 fee, except with an annual contract or a contract that includes cancellation, or if you were repatriated at the insurer’s expense. With Protecto, you get your price online in under 2 minutes.

Buying through Protecto

The contract must be bought before you leave your province. Buy online or with one of our advisors. An advisor may call to help you with the health declaration, never to push. Protecto is a firm registered with the AMF (#602624) and licensed in Ontario (FSRAO 41378M). Our clients rate us 4.9 out of 5 on Google, across more than 800 reviews.

See also our snowbird travel insurance page.