6 Best Medical Evacuation Insurance Plans for RV Travelers Nomads Swear By
RV travel requires a safety net. We compare 6 top medevac plans that nomads trust to get them to their home hospital during a serious medical emergency.
You’re a thousand miles from home, exploring a beautiful national forest, when a simple fall results in a serious injury. The local clinic can stabilize you, but you need surgery, and your trusted orthopedic surgeon is back in your home state. This scenario is the one every RVer hopes to avoid, but it highlights a critical gap in many nomads’ safety nets: how do you get home when you’re medically unable to travel on your own?
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Why RVers Need Medical Evacuation Coverage
Living on the road means you’re often far from your primary care physicians, specialists, and family support system. While your health insurance is great for paying doctors and hospitals where you are, it almost never covers the cost of getting you back home for treatment or recovery. That’s the specific job of medical evacuation coverage.
Think of it this way: health insurance pays for the what (the medical care), while medevac insurance pays for the where (transporting you to the right location). A medical flight on a private air ambulance can easily cost $25,000, $50,000, or even more. Without dedicated coverage, a single medical event could be financially devastating, forcing you to either pay out-of-pocket or recover in an unfamiliar place, far from loved ones.
This isn’t just for catastrophic, life-threatening events. A broken hip, a complicated infection, or any condition that requires hospitalization can trigger the need for transport. For RVers, who value freedom and self-reliance, having a plan to get home isn’t a luxury; it’s a fundamental part of a sustainable life on the road.
Good Sam TravelAssist: All-in-One RV Support
Good Sam TravelAssist is often the first plan RVers look into, and for good reason. It’s designed specifically around the challenges of the RV lifestyle, bundling medical evacuation with a host of other practical services that address the "what if" scenarios unique to nomads.
The core of the plan is medical evacuation to a hospital near your home if you’re hospitalized while traveling. But its real standout feature is RV return service. If you are medically unable to drive, they will arrange for a professional driver to return your RV—and even your tow vehicle—back to your home base. For a solo traveler or a couple where only one person is comfortable driving the rig, this service alone is worth the price of admission.
Beyond the big-ticket items, TravelAssist includes a suite of supporting benefits. These can include transporting a family member to your bedside, returning your pets safely home, and assisting with prescription delivery. It’s a comprehensive package that acts as a full-spectrum emergency concierge for RV travelers. It may not offer the absolute "hospital of choice" flexibility of some premium competitors, but its RV-centric approach provides a powerful and practical safety net.
FMCAssist: Essential Coverage for FMCA Members
For members of the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA), medical evacuation coverage is one of the most valuable perks of membership. FMCAssist is not an optional add-on; it’s an automatic benefit included with your annual dues, making it one of the most cost-effective options available.
Provided through a partnership with Seven Corners, FMCAssist covers emergency medical evacuation and repatriation when you’re more than 100 miles from home. If you’re hospitalized, the plan’s medical team will coordinate with your doctors to arrange and pay for transport to a medical facility better suited for your care, which often means one closer to home.
Like Good Sam, FMCAssist also includes vehicle return. If you or your traveling companion can’t drive your rig home due to a medical emergency, they’ll find a professional to do it for you. They also provide for the return of deceased remains, a somber but necessary consideration. The key thing to remember is that this is a membership benefit, not a standalone insurance policy. You have to be an FMCA member to get it, but for those already in the club, it’s an incredible value that covers the most critical needs.
Medjet: Transport to Your Hospital of Choice
Medjet’s entire brand is built on one powerful promise: they will transport you to your hospital of choice. This is a crucial distinction. Most other plans will transport you to the "nearest appropriate facility" or a hospital "near your home." Medjet gives you the final say.
If you’re hospitalized 150 miles or more from home, Medjet will arrange air medical transport to any hospital you choose in your home country. This means you can get back to your own doctors, your own specialists, and your own support network. During a stressful medical crisis, the peace of mind that comes from being in a familiar medical system, surrounded by family, is immeasurable.
Medjet offers both short-term and annual memberships and covers a wide range of medical situations, not just life-or-death emergencies. The primary tradeoff is that Medjet is laser-focused on medical transport. It does not typically include services like RV return or pet transport. You are paying a premium for a top-tier medical benefit, making it a perfect choice for nomads who prioritize getting back to their specific doctors above all else.
SkyMed TAKES YOU HOME: Guaranteed Repatriation
SkyMed operates in a similar space as Medjet, with a heavy emphasis on getting you home. Their tagline, "TAKES YOU HOME," is a direct and reassuring promise. They guarantee they will arrange and pay for medical transport back to a hospital near your residence if you’re seriously ill or injured and hospitalized.
SkyMed offers multiple membership levels, but their core service is robust. They differentiate themselves by covering a broad range of situations and providing comprehensive logistical support. Members often praise the company for handling all the details during a crisis, allowing the family to focus on the patient’s health rather than on coordinating flights and medical crews.
A key advantage for RVers is that many of SkyMed’s plans do include vehicle return, combining the hospital-of-choice benefit with the practical need to get your rig home. This makes it a compelling hybrid for those who want the flexibility of choosing their destination hospital but also need the logistical support for their home on wheels. They are a direct and strong competitor to Medjet, and the best choice often comes down to specific plan features and pricing.
Global Rescue: For Adventurous Off-Grid Nomads
While most medevac plans are designed for hospital-to-hospital transport, Global Rescue is built for a different kind of traveler: the true adventurer. If your RV life involves serious boondocking, overlanding in remote areas, or international travel off the beaten path, Global Rescue is in a class of its own.
Their signature service is field rescue. If you are more than 100 miles from home and are injured or ill to the point where you cannot get to a hospital on your own, Global Rescue will deploy resources to get you out. They have relationships with rescue teams worldwide and can coordinate everything from a helicopter extraction in a remote canyon to a simple ground transport from a backcountry campsite.
Global Rescue will then transport you to the nearest appropriate medical facility and, once you’re stable, can evacuate you to your home hospital. Their services are trusted by organizations like NASA and the U.S. Ski Team. For the average RVer sticking to established roads and campgrounds, this level of service might be overkill. But for the nomad who truly pushes the boundaries of exploration, Global Rescue provides an unparalleled level of security.
MASA Assist: Ground and Air Ambulance Coverage
Many travelers focus on the long-distance flight home but forget about the first, most critical step: the ambulance ride. A single helicopter air ambulance flight from a rural accident scene to a trauma center can cost over $50,000, and even ground ambulances can run into the thousands. These are costs that health insurance often only partially covers, leaving you with staggering bills.
MASA (Medical Air Services Association) Assist specializes in filling this gap. They provide prepaid plans that cover the full cost of emergency medical transportation, both by ground and air ambulance, anywhere in the U.S. and Canada, with no deductibles or co-pays. If you need a ride, you call for help, and MASA handles the bill.
While MASA also offers some longer-distance repatriation benefits, its core strength is covering those initial, high-cost emergency transports. For this reason, many RVers use MASA as a foundational layer of protection, sometimes in addition to a plan like Medjet or Good Sam. It protects against the most common and financially crippling out-of-pocket emergency expenses you’re likely to face on the road.
Comparing Key Features of Top Medevac Plans
Choosing the right plan comes down to your travel style, risk tolerance, and budget. There is no single "best" option, only the best option for you. As you compare, focus on these key decision points:
- Transport Destination: Do you want the ultimate flexibility of a hospital of choice (Medjet, SkyMed), or are you comfortable with transport to the "nearest appropriate facility" or a hospital near home (Good Sam, FMCAssist)?
- RV & Pet Return: Is having your rig and pets brought home a non-negotiable? If so, plans from Good Sam, FMCAssist, and SkyMed should be at the top of your list.
- Type of Rescue: Do you travel to extremely remote, off-grid locations? If so, the field rescue capabilities of Global Rescue are essential. For most RVers, standard hospital-to-hospital transport is sufficient.
- Ambulance Costs: Are you concerned about the high out-of-pocket costs of ground or air ambulances? MASA Assist is specifically designed to eliminate this financial risk.
- Bundled vs. Standalone: Is the coverage part of a larger membership you already want, like with FMCAssist? Or do you prefer a standalone, specialized service like Medjet?
Ultimately, you need to read the fine print of any plan you consider. Pay close attention to the definition of a "medical necessity," pre-existing condition clauses, and geographic limitations. The best plan is the one whose terms you understand and whose coverage matches the reality of how you travel.
Investing in medical evacuation coverage isn’t about planning for the worst-case scenario; it’s about buying the freedom to explore with confidence. Knowing you have a solid plan to get you, your family, and your home-on-wheels back to safety allows you to fully embrace the adventure of the open road. Don’t let an unexpected medical bill be the event that ends your nomadic dream.