Private Health Insurance is a way of providing you and your family with private healthcare.
It allows you to bypass NHS waiting lists, getting you care faster than would be available otherwise.
You’ll get superior service, such as a choice in where your treatment takes place and potentially choice of the consultants/specialists you see.
No one can deny that the NHS does a fantastic job. However, the service has faced a real-terms spending squeeze over the past decade.
At the same time, the population has become older, sicker, frailer and generally harder to treat, resulting in resources being stretched to the max.
As a result, many are looking into Private Medical Insurance to get treatment faster than would be available under NHS care.
According to NHS statistics…
Our team of experts are often asked which is the best Health Insurance. However, the answer isn’t simple. There are various types of Private Medical Insurance, each with their own policy options that benefit different people with different needs. The important thing is to find the most suitable policy for you based on your needs and budget.
Inpatient or day-patient care – where a hospital bed is required, either for the night or for part of a day, respectively – is a core part of all Health Insurance cover.
This will cover you for surgical procedures and all related costs.
As well as core inpatient cover, you can also add outpatient cover to your Medical Insurance policy.
Adding outpatient cover allows for diagnostic tests in the lead up to a potential operation to be done privately, rather than waiting for the NHS.
With inpatient-only cover, you’ll have to wait for the NHS to diagnose your condition before using your Private Medical Insurance to resolve the issue.
Adding outpatient treatment means you get the extra layer of cover that comes with having your diagnostic tests and potentially any therapies, such as physiotherapy, covered privately.
The type of underwriting you have on your Private Medical Insurance policy is important as it may have an impact on what you can claim for, especially when it comes to pre-existing conditions.
For individuals, there are two main types of medical underwriting.
Moratorium underwriting excludes most pre-existing conditions you’ve suffered over a set period, usually the last 5 years.
If you have suffered from a medical condition in the past 5 years, you’ll need to satisfy a set period on the policy – typically 2 years – without having any treatment, advice or medication for that condition before the insurer will consider covering it.
With full medical underwriting, you disclose your entire medical history upfront and the insurer places outright exclusions on most pre-existing conditions.
They’ll usually rule out covering any pre-existing conditions, although there may be leeway to negotiate cover for more minor illnesses at your insurer’s discretion.
It’s important to be well-informed when choosing your medical underwriting as it could have a massive impact on what you’ll be able to claim for at a later date.
If you have pre-existing medical conditions or are concerned with what will and won’t be covered please don’t hesitate to pop us a call on 02074425880.
Nadeem Farid
Head of Employee Benefits at Drewberry
As well as deciding whether you need to add outpatient cover to your Private Medical Insurance, you’ll also have a number of other options to consider. For instance, would you want to add:
If you’re looking to get this cover in place, check out our top Health Insurance tips when you’re buying PMI.
Of course none of these tips are a substitute for speaking with an expert adviser, but they’re designed to give you a rough idea of factors you may want to look out for when purchasing cover.
You can add a Health Insurance excess to most policies.
Just like with car insurance, an excess means you’ll have to pay the first portion of the claim out of your own pocket.
The higher the excess, the cheaper your monthly premiums because you’ll have to pay a larger proportion of the cost of the claim upfront.
While you can opt for Health Insurance with no excess, this will be at the cost of higher monthly premiums because the insurer will have to cover the entire amount of your claim.
While inpatient and day-patient treatment comes as standard with ‘core’ or ‘basic’ Health Insurance, adding on outpatient cover is an optional extra.
If you’re only worried about waiting for operations and the need to have surgery in a timely manner at a date convenient for you, then it may be sufficient to just have inpatient cover.
However, it’s important to realise that with inpatient-only treatment, you’ll have to rely on the NHS for everything that gets you to the point of being operated on.
This includes scans, tests and other diagnostics, which can all also have significant waiting lists.
Some insurers offer you cashback if you use the NHS for operations and procedures rather than relying on your Private Medical Insurance.
This will usually be in the form of a set amount per night you spend in an NHS hospital recuperating from an operation.
So if the NHS waiting list for the procedure isn’t too long and you’re happy to not use your insurance then you may be able to use the NHS cashback option.
You can reduce the cost of cover with certain insurers by choosing the 6 week NHS wait option.
This means your Health Insurance will only kick in if the waiting time for the inpatient procedure you require is in excess of 6 weeks in your local area.
Doing so will reduce your premiums because the NHS still deals with many cases in that time period.
Due to the current length of NHS waiting times, some insurers such as AXA aren’t offering this option. The market changes regularly, so if you’re unsure, give us a call on 02074425880 or email help@drewberry.co.uk to find out your options.
The 6 week NHS wait option only applies to inpatient treatment. If you’ve added outpatient cover to your policy to receive private care for diagnostic tests / scans etc., this will always go ahead privately as soon as possible.
Joseph Toft
Health & Wellbeing Expert at Drewberry
Private Health Insurance is designed to give you access to private healthcare in the best hospitals in the country.
However, some of the best hospitals and clinics charge more than others due to how prestigious they are and/or their location (e.g. on Harley Street or elsewhere in central London).
Health Insurance providers have ‘tiers’ of hospitals and clinics you can get access to, with the best hospitals being in the top tier and then other, still private, facilities being in lower tiers.
Restricting your access to hospitals in the lower tier can end up saving you a lot of money on your premiums.
Drew Nelson
Health & Wellbeing Expert at Drewberry
It’s important that you review your cover regularly, especially if you find that the cost of Health Insurance has increased at renewal. This can happen due to a variety of reasons, but the biggest cause of a hike in Private Health Insurance premiums will be because you’ve made a claim.
Obviously we can’t avoid getting ill and needing to use our Private Medical Insurance, but a cleaner claims history could help keep a lid on the cost of your Health Insurance the following year.
Another reason the cost of PMI goes up includes medical inflation, such as the cost of new drugs and treatments.
Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) has also been hiked in recent years – despite extensive industry lobbying, the government has continued to increase this tax on insurance.
AvivaAviva is the largest insurer in the UK. Aviva’s PMI offering is their Healthier Solutions product, which you can tailor to your own budget.
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AXA PPP HealthcareBased in Tunbridge Wells, AXA PPP Healthcare has helped people to access healthcare services since 1940.
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BupaEstablished over 60 years ago, Bupa is a UK household name. Bupa Health Insurance has two tiers of over: Comprehensive (full inpatient and outpatient care) and Treatment & Care (inpatient-only). Both options include mental health cover as standard.
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The ExeterFounded in 1927, Exeter Family Friendly is a mutual Friendly Society with over 60,000 members. The Exeter’s Health Insurance policy is known as The Exeter Health+, which includes mental health cover as standard.
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VitalityVitality (formerly PruHealth) launched in October 2004 as a joint venture between Prudential and South African health insurance provider Discovery. Vitality has an innovative approach to health insurance in their Vitality plan, rewarding you with points and reduced premiums for healthy living.
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Getting Health Insurance advice is so important because setting up the most suitable product can be complicated, particularly if you have existing medical conditions. There are so many nuances to the cover that make it hard to get it right if you go it alone without the help of an expert.
We started Drewberry™ because we were tired of being treated like a number.
We all deserve a first class service when it comes to issues as important as protecting our health. Below are just a few reasons why it makes sense to talk to us.
If it is all getting a little confusing and you want to talk through your options to make sure you find the most suitable cover please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Pop us a call on 02074425880 or email help@drewberry.co.uk.
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