Actions

Father of woman with cancer denied traveler's insurance claim

Posted at 6:11 PM, Oct 22, 2018
and last updated 2018-10-22 21:00:29-04

Editor's note: Contact7 seeks out audience tips and feedback to help people in need, resolve problems and hold the powerful accountable. If you know of a community need our call center could address, or have a story idea for our investigative team to pursue, please email us at contact7@thedenverchannel.com or call (720) 462-7777. Find more Contact7 stories here.

DENVER – A father who bought traveler's insurance for his daughter battling breast cancer said he was denied a claim because of medical reasons. 

The ticket was for a surgical consultation in New Orleans.

Karl Rydjord bought the tickets with United Airlines, but because of his daughter Kandice’s condition, he decided to purchase traveler’s insurance through AIG Travel Guard.

“The ticket was a combination of celebrating the end of chemo treatments she had been going through,” Rydjord said. “And then also go down for a surgical consultation at the Center for Breast Cancer Surgery.”

On top of breast cancer, Rydjord said his daughter was diagnosed with a lymphatic disease making her prone to infections.

“My daughter got an infection – a pretty serious infection requiring antibiotics, so she was unable to travel due to the infection,” Rydjord said.

Rydjord exchanged emails with AIG and made a claim.

On AIG’s website, there is a waiver for pre-existing conditions that Rydjord had to fill out.

According to Rydjord, after he filled out all the paperwork and after the adjuster had everything they needed to make a decision, he was denied.

“A lot of it I think was confusion,” Rydjord said. “The adjuster wants a doctor to fill out paperwork and say my daughter wasn’t able to travel at the time of cancelation. But also want the doctor to say ‘yes, she was able to travel’ when I purchased the tickets. So they send a form to the doctor just saying ‘was she able to travel?’ and of course the doctor checks 'no' at the time because she wasn’t able to travel. But none of it was cleared on whether it was during the purchase or during the time she needed to leave.”

Rydjord exchanged several emails trying to make his case, but ultimately he gave up on AIG.

Denver7 reached out wondering if AIG would reconsider its decision but received no response.

A month later, Rydjord drove his daughter to New Orleans to get that consultation.

According to Rydjord, United Airlines credited him the amount of money he spent to purchase the tickets.

However, he said he doesn’t care about the money and that he just wants to warn others that this could happen to them.

“I just want people to know that anybody traveling who has some type of medical condition or they’re planning to travel to be very cautious when buying traveler’s insurance,” Rydjord said. “For me and my family, I’ll just take the risk myself and deal directly with the airlines if something comes up.”