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Recently had to receive emergency medical care when travelling and was wondering with which insurance provider to claim.

I have a travel insurance addon via my health insurance provider and another one via my credit card.

Is it fine to claim from both immediately?

Obviously waiting for the claim approval from the first one would most likely make it too late to apply for the second one.

For specific answers. Resident Germany. Insurance provider TK (Envivas) Credit Card (Amex Gold)

For Emergency care outside EU

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    I bet if you read the fine print of each insurance you'll find that this is not allowed. Do you think insurance Company B would be happy to pay out $$ when insurance company A has already paid out $$ to make you "whole"? Commented Feb 6 at 18:59
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    Just to add on. It may be OK to use both insurances if the primary one doesn't make you 100% whole, and you use the secondary one as gap coverage. But that is a totally different question and very dependent on the exact insurance you have. Commented Feb 6 at 19:09
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    You'll need to figure out which one is the primary coverage and which one is not. From my experience, credit card provided coverage is rarely primary. Commented Feb 6 at 19:13
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    @Taladris: because it's considered fraud in many countries, including - I believe - Germany. Commented Feb 7 at 14:12
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    @Andy No, it's not. OP is not required by law to have a credit card that offers travel health insurance, nor is he required to have an addon with his regular insurer, though it's advisable to have at least one of them. OP probably could have cancelled one of the insurances once he obtained the other, but chose to keep both. An adult making a (hopefully) informed decision to have more than one insurance for the same event for whatever reason is not fraud by a company offering this insurance. Commented Feb 7 at 14:58

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General

I have twice faced the same problem. My solution was to complete the claims for all the possible insurers (in one case there were three: a flight specific insurer, a credit card insurer and a general travel insurer). On each claim form I gave clear information about the other two insurers, including their contact details ... and I was fully refunded for the value that I had lost.

I figured that the insurers themselves were more likely to be able to work out an appropriate apportionment of their respective liabilities than I would be. After all, they deal with insurance every day.

Country specific

I do not know the law in Germany but in Australia, insurance is dealt with under Commonwealth ("Federal") law. The Insurance Contracts Act states the explicit assumption that all parties involved in an insurance contract will deal with one another with the utmost good faith. I do know that such provisions are not uncommon in the law of other countries. The assumption (enforceable at law) is that, given your own full disclosure, the other parties will deal with you fairly.

Insurance generally

Again, under Australian law but also a feature of other countries, is that insurance by its very nature, relates to a risk. One cannot insure for more than the risk; hence one cannot, or rather one ought not be, refunded more than the value lost. Insurance is not a profit making exercise for the insured person. But there is nothing in that presumption, nor in the article of utmost good faith, that would prevent you, like me, from lodging claims with all parties, making full disclosure about the state of affairs, and letting it play out.

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    In Germany: §200 VVG "Bereicherungsverbot" Commented Feb 7 at 11:02
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    +1. It's a general principle of insurance that the insured cannot profit from their loss. It's prima facie insurance fraud to make two or more claims in respect of one insured risk without notifying all the insurers of the duplicated coverage. Commented Feb 7 at 12:21
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    @KarstenKoop For any monolingual, non-German, interested in the slightly cryptic comment from Karsten, "Berichungsverbot" is a prohibition against enrichment ... contained in section 200 of the German Insurance Contracts Act (Versicherungsvertragsgesetz). Hence confirming the parallel, for the OP, of my comments about Australian law with the law in German. Commented Feb 8 at 3:41
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    ... §200 VVG "Bereicherungsverbot": Hat die versicherte Person wegen desselben Versicherungsfalles einen Anspruch gegen mehrere Erstattungsverpflichtete, darf die Gesamterstattung die Gesamtaufwendungen nicht übersteigen. (Translated: If the insured person has a claim against several reimbursement parties due to the same insured event, the total reimbursement may not exceed the total expenses) Commented Feb 8 at 10:13
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    @CrimsonDark: Not every multilingual person is fluent in German. Commented Feb 8 at 12:35
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In my experience, credit card insurance is designed as a top-up insurance. If your credit card is like mine, claiming from both insurers is necessary and it's perfectly fine do it immediately. The credit card's insurer will require proof of what the health insurance paid and will put the claim on hold while waiting for that document.

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In my country you need to send in the original receipts to process the claim. If the claim amount is higher than coverage then company A will write the amount already paid on the receipts so you can claim the remaining from the next insurer. Or if company A find out you have another policy with company B they might talk to each other and split the bills. There is no way you can claim X dollars from A and claim another X dollars from B.

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    This feels like a very analogue answer that probably no longer applies. What does original receipts even mean when that receipt is a pdf in an email (that you may well have printed out) Commented Feb 7 at 13:30
  • @RichardTingle Marking up PDFs and replying to emails is a thing Commented Feb 7 at 13:36
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    @Midavalo I'm not sure I understand what you mean. How would replying to an email mean an insurer has an exclusive "original receipt" as opposed to one of potentially many copies Commented Feb 7 at 13:38
  • @RichardTingle in my country we are still that analogue. You still get the printed receipt. Commented Feb 7 at 17:39
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    @RichardTingle With PDF forms, it is possible to implement a once-only fetch from a server. If used, this would enable providers to send a PDF that can be only once opened "for the first time". I have never seen this in use for receipts, though. Commented Feb 9 at 14:55
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Generally this is not allowed and you likely need to claim only from one of these two insurances as stated in the terms and conditions of each insurance. However, there are too many rules and exceptions regarding this and it will depend on each case. As far as I know, most travel health insurances in Germany attached to the statutory health insurance will cover you 100% and are better than travel health insurance form European credit card providers, leaving nothing for the credit card insurance to cover.
If for example you rent a car with a mandatory insurance for € 1000 deductible, then your credit card might cover € 1000 in case of an event, and the mandatory insurance you paid for the rental place will cover the rest.
Another example is insurance for luggage or flight delay that some credit cards have, those are usually in addition to any other compensation you might receive. So you could potentially claim € 500 from the airline under the EC261 or Montreal convention and also get another € 500 from your credit card insurance. This is true for an insurance I use to have, but it also depends on each case.

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    It's not allowed to get compensation from different insurers for the same event; but that doesn't mean you can't pass your claim to both insurers so long as you tell them that you are doing so. Commented Feb 7 at 14:10
  • "It's not allowed to get compensation from different insurers for the same event;" - This is usually the case, but not true all the time, you should check the terms and conditions. Commented Feb 7 at 14:19

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