Age Limit (Travel)
The Age Limit (Travel) refers to the maximum age at which a person is eligible for emergency medical travel insurance coverage or specific benefits under a health or dental plan. Insurers impose age limits to manage risk, as medical expenses tend to rise significantly with age and the likelihood of pre-existing conditions increases.
How It Works
An age limit can act as an eligibility cutoff, where coverage becomes unavailable once you reach a certain age, or as a coverage reduction, where the maximum benefit or trip length decreases after a certain age. Travel health insurance maximums can vary based on age, and many policies also specify a time limit for coverage, such as 60 days per trip. Individual travel insurers in Canada differ widely on age eligibility. Some, such as Blue Cross and Desjardins Insurance, impose no maximum age limit, while others set a cutoff such as age 95 with Humania or age 75 with RBC Insurance. Age can also limit the covered trip duration. For example, one Canadian insurer limits a single trip to 183 days for travellers under 60 and 59 days for those 60 and over.
Example:
A retiring Canadian who has always relied on the emergency travel medical coverage in an employer group health plan should check the expiry age before booking a trip. Employer travel coverage commonly ends at retirement and typically expires by age 70, and individual supplemental plans may end travel benefits even earlier, with some Manulife association plan travel coverage expiring at age 65. At the same time, trip-duration limits often tighten with age, so a snowbird approaching the cutoff may need to buy a standalone emergency travel medical policy to stay insured abroad.
What to Watch For:
Many individual supplemental health plans cover only shorter trips, and the travel benefit expires for older insureds. Employer group travel coverage usually ends when you retire or reduce your work hours and typically expires once you reach age 70, so retirees who relied on it must purchase their own emergency travel insurance. Watch your trip length closely, because travelling beyond the number of days included for your age can void coverage entirely. Under one Canadian policy, being away longer than the days allowed for your age means you are not covered at all by Emergency Health Care unless you ask to extend coverage.
