Discover the facts about private health insurance

It would be very easy for us to say ‘can you put a price on peace of mind for you and your loved ones?’, but we know the reality for many people is that money is tight.

We’ve worked hard to make sure that our private health insurance is an affordable option for as many people as possible, which is why, we offer the following ways to bring the cost of your healthcare cover down even more.

• Save at least 25% with the 6 Week Discount OptionAdding this option to your policy reduces your premiums and means you’ll receive your treatment on the NHS if they can treat you within six weeks of the date treatment should take place. If the NHS can’t treat you within six weeks and your treatment is covered under your plan, you’ll go private straight away.
• Choose an excess to reduce your premiumYou can choose to have an excess on your policy of £100, £250, or a £500 excess. If you have modular 3 – 9 you can also choose a £1,000 excess. All of these excess amounts will help the cost of your cover come down.

Don’t forget your no claims discount! If you don’t make a claim we’ll increase your no claims discount so you’ll enjoy greater savings on the basic price when you renew your health insurance policy. If you do make a claim your discount will be reduced - but this only affects the price for the person who claims and not others who are covered on your plan.

The NHS is one of this country’s finest achievements and strives to make quality healthcare available to all. But with an increasingly elderly population putting more demands on this service, people may find that they have to wait longer than they are comfortable with to receive treatment.

Private medical insurance is a way of making sure you and your family receive prompt access to the treatment you’re covered for – one less thing to worry about when you’re ill.

In most cases, having health insurance means you’ll receive treatment in comfortable, private facilities. Most of the 250 quality-assessed hospitals in our directory offer en-suite rooms with TV and radio, which will be music to the ears of anyone who has spent time trying to rest and recover on a busy hospital ward.

Finally, many of our customers choose private health insurance to complement the services they receive from the NHS. For example, by choosing the 6 Week Option, where the NHS treats you if it’s within six weeks of the date when treatment should take place.

Hear from our members' about their private medical treatment.

Yes, we offer market leading cover and care for heart and cancer.

Despite all the advances of modern medicine, these are still the words you never want to hear from your doctor. They are also two conditions that have seen dramatic improvements in treatment and survival rates over the last few years, with new treatments and drugs constantly making headlines.

With these advances and changes to the way people are treated, the needs of our members have changed, too. With increasing survival times, people are more likely to need treatment and care for longer.

It’s vital our health insurance reflects this. That’s why we’ve enhanced our existing cover with our new Heart and Cancer Commitment.

It means we can better meet our members’ needs at all stages of cancer and for heart surgery. We also provide access to the very latest in treatment, drugs, agreed clinical trials, support and care for cancer.

Find out more about how we support cancer and heart patients.

It’s true that prices do go up, and we try our best to keep these increases to a minimum. However, the fact remains that in order to stay in business we have to make sure we have enough funds to cover the cost of our members’ claims

Exciting advances in treatment and technology are being made all the time, and more and more people are reaping the benefits of increasingly complex treatments like heart bypasses and joint replacements.

These treatments can save or transform lives, but they come at a price – and the more our customers use their health insurance to claim for them, the bigger the fund we need to pay healthcare providers. To fund the uptake of these treatments we share the cost among members as a premium increase – after all, it could well be you or your family that needs them in the future.

Additionally, your age at renewal affects the price of your healthcare policy, simply because it’s an unfortunate fact that, as people get older, they make more claims.

Another way that helps keep premium increases as low as possible, is by negotiating hard with hospitals, to make sure their charges are fully justified. We question any that are unexpectedly high, and require all hospitals included in our network to participate in continuous quality assessment programmes.

We know that the cost of cover can be worrying, so we’re proud to say we’ve worked hard to ensure our private health insurance policies offer good value for money. And if price does remain a concern, we provide a number of ways to help you reduce your premiums. We can discuss these with you at any time.

We aim to make claiming on your medical insurance policy as straightforward as possible and you’ll be reassured to know that in 2010 we paid out over £3m in claims every s working day. The claims process is simple:

• Step 1 – if you suspect something is wrong, visit your GP

  As soon as you have signs or symptoms that something is amiss, visit your GP as they’ll need to decide whether you should be referred to a specialist for further investigations and, possibly, treatment.

• Step 2 - give us a call

  Before you go to see your specialist or arrange any treatment, give us a call to let us know what your GP has said, and what the next steps are. In most cases you won’t even need to complete a claim form, but we may need to confirm details of your condition and treatment with your GP and/or specialist before we can authorise treatment.

• Step 3 – concentrate on getting better

  Visit your specialist to receive your medical treatment and we’ll arrange payment directly with them.

While it’s true that, like other private medical insurance providers, we won’t meet the cost of treatment for pre-existing conditions and some specified related conditions, you’ll still get prompt access to private eligible treatment for new conditions that arise after you join.

However, our Moratorium plan could provide cover for treatment of pre-existing medical conditions and specified related conditions once you’ve been a member for at least 2 years – and they work like this:

For the first two years after joining, you won’t be covered for treatment of any medical condition or specified related conditions that you had during the five years immediately prior to joining.

Then, if you have a period of two consecutive years after you join where you:

• haven’t had any medical treatment or advice,
• or taken any drugs or medicines,
• or followed any special diets in respect of your pre-existing condition during that time,

at the end of that period of two consecutive years, we will look at covering them in the future.

So even if you have a pre-existing condition – it’s still worth looking at private health cover.

It would be very easy for us to say ‘can you put a price on peace of mind for you and your loved ones?’, but we know the reality for many people is that money is tight.

We’ve worked hard to make sure that our private health insurance is an affordable option for as many people as possible, which is why, we offer the following ways to bring the cost of your healthcare cover down even more.

• Save at least 25% with the 6 Week Discount OptionAdding this option to your policy reduces your premiums and means you’ll receive your treatment on the NHS if they can treat you within six weeks of the date treatment should take place. If the NHS can’t treat you within six weeks and your treatment is covered under your plan, you’ll go private straight away.
• Choose an excess to reduce your premiumYou can choose to have an excess on your policy of £100, £250, or a £500 excess. If you have modular 3 – 9 you can also choose a £1,000 excess. All of these excess amounts will help the cost of your cover come down.

Don’t forget your no claims discount! If you don’t make a claim we’ll increase your no claims discount so you’ll enjoy greater savings on the basic price when you renew your health insurance policy. If you do make a claim your discount will be reduced - but this only affects the price for the person who claims and not others who are covered on your plan.