Private Medical Health Insurance

If you have decided to opt for a private medical health insurance policy, your next decision will involve choosing a provider from the many private health insurance providers currently operating in the UK market. To some degree, the major providers all offer similar comprehensive private medical health insurance packages, meaning that TV, print and online advertising will be the deciding factor in which provider receives a greater market share.

However, if you are looking for a more specific level of private medical health insurance, the differences between the policies of larger providers become rather more noticeable. It’s therefore worth digging a bit deeper into the small print of the individual private medical health insurance policies that you are offered, and making a checklist of your private medical insurance healthcare priorities to determine whether the cover is right for you.

Get a Private Medical Insurance Quote today!

Private Medical Health Insurance: Things to Consider

• Are you switching cover due to moving jobs?  If you are switching from a private medical health insurance policy that you had through your employer to an individual policy, you need to make sure that you can switch policies without losing any of the cover that you had previously.  This is especially important where the work-paid private medical health insurance cover also insured your family’s health.
• Is child cover offered and up to what age?  Some private medical health insurance policies include child cover as a ‘free’ incentive to take out the policy.  However, it may be that the additional cover has been built into the overall policy cost, so try and compare pricing on a like-for-like basis with other insurers.  If this cover is in fact being included as a hidden cost, you might be better off saving the money on your own premium and taking out dedicated child private medical health insurance as well - the costs of medical treatment is generally lower for children, and this is reflected in the costs of child healthcare. Another important question to ask is the age up to which your child’s healthcare can be covered within your private medical health insurance policy. Some insurers specify that a child is classified as a dependent up to the age of 18, whilst others will provide child cover up until your child ceases to be financially dependent, which may include time spent at university.
• Does the policy include complementary medicine?  Increasingly, private medical health insurance policies provide an option whereby you can choose to include alternative therapies within your cover.  This means that if you need a course of acupuncture, physiotherapy or homeopathy your policy will pay.  However, this is not included as standard in most policies, so you will need to choose an insurer that offers modular private medical health insurance cover if complementary medicine is a healthcare requirement of yours.