The Basics of Private Health Insurance Cover

By insurance in health insurance

Oct 14

Private health insurance is necessary either because one’s place of employment does not offer its employees health cover or because a person would like to supplement the health cover that (s)he is already receiving either from work or from the NHS. There are several health cover plans to choose from, each offering a different level of assurance to the policy owner; however, there is no standard for the health cover offered by different insurance companies. Each insurer decides what will be included in each of its packages and what the pound limit is for each term, etc., so it is wise to consult a number of companies.

Some things to consider are what services you think you may use most frequently with your health cover (such as: prescriptions, therapies, pregnancy) and what services you simply could not afford (such as: chemotherapy, hospital charges, nursing at home) without insurance. To help you make this decision, consider some different categories of health cover.

First there are health cover packages, in which the potential policy owner has a fixed range of cover, with few personal choices. On the contrary, there are also very open plans, where the buyer tailor-makes a policy to best suit him/her. Thirdly, there is limited health cover which only deals with a very small number of illnesses and injuries. A shared risk policy is for the person that cannot afford the highest level of health cover but does not want to be so financially vulnerable. The idea here is that you negotiate with the company, deciding to pay a certain ?amount yourself for each service rendered in return for a lower premium. The amount that you pay for each service is called an excess.

These amounts range greatly, but they can be up to 1000. However, many policies will limit the amount of money that you would pay in one year. A variation on the shared risk policy is called shared responsibility. In such a policy, you would be asked to pay a percentage (usually between 25% and 75%) of the cost of each service, once again in return for lower premiums. Finally, there are special packages that cover, for example, the elderly, travel, or children, among others.

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