Dealing with a medical emergency is difficult enough when you're at home. When you're traveling abroad, navigating another country's health care system can be as painful as the illness or injury itself.
Shelby Gonzalez has firsthand knowledge of that. When she was 18, she spent her gap year between high school and college in New Zealand and Southeast Asia.
While exploring Pangandaran, a coastal village in southwest Java, she developed appendicitis. She had emergency surgery in a nearby town and was in the hospital for nearly a week.
Gonzalez had purchased temporary health insurance before she left home. The company, AIG, assigned her an agent, reimbursed her for her surgery and hospital expenses and arranged her transport back to Minneapolis in time for Christmas.
"It made all the difference to feel like there was someone out there looking out for me," says the now 27-year-old who lives in Grand Marais, Minn.