Family Private Medical Insurance
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Family Private Medical Insurance
Carolyn Dunion explains how family private medical insurance works.
What is family private medical insurance? How does this work?
Family private medical insurance is an insurance plan that gives you access to private medical care.
It tends not to cover chronic conditions like asthma or ongoing issues, but if you were given a serious diagnosis, or you needed access to diagnostics, physiotherapy and other services, it could be very useful.
This type of insurance gives you access to private medical providers, and could get you medical care more quickly.
How does this differ from family income benefit insurance and other types such as life insurance and critical illness cover?
Life insurance and critical illness cover will pay out if you get a diagnosis or if you die, sadly.
With family income benefit insurance, if you are unable to work due to a diagnosis of critical illness or you are medically unfit to work, your provider will pay an income to you.
Private medical insurance won’t pay you any cash, but it will give you free access to private medical facilities.
How do I know if I’m eligible to apply for family private medical insurance?
Most people are. There aren’t many exclusions that mean you wouldn’t be covered. There’s a number of different ways you can do it. If you want to declare any health conditions that you have, that might impact on the price.
Sometimes providers will simply take anybody, but if you have existing symptoms, they won’t cover that particular condition for the first two years.
You have to make a decision about how you want to do it. Usually everybody can get cover, it’s just about the cost or exclusions of cover.
What if I have pre-existing medical conditions?
It depends on what you have. That’s something you can discuss with your advisor. You might want to declare something that could change the premium, but it will allow you to be covered from day one.
That particular condition may not be covered, but might include support for any complications of the condition. It’s probably something worth discussing on a case by case basis, but you should still be able to get some form of cover.
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Does private health insurance cover family members? What options do I have?
You can choose to cover family members. It’s quite common for people to do that as a family. If you’re taking this insurance out for yourself, and you’re not getting it through a workplace, it would be quite common for us to quote for the full family.
Equally, you can just take it individually. If your spouse already has cover through work, for example, and that doesn’t cover you, you might just want it for yourself. It’s about making sure everybody’s got the cover they need.
Which is the best medical insurance for families? Are there private plan options available?
All of this is private. It’s a policy you take out, you pay for, and therefore you’re in control of.
We keep an eye on the providers, what they’re offering and the prices they’re charging. The best provider might vary from person to person.
For example, if you have a pre-existing medical condition, some providers may be more sympathetic to that than others. That’s the role of an advisor, to get the right match for you.
How long should I get family private medical insurance for?
These types of policies renew annually. If you have life cover, critical illness illness or family income benefit, those policies do not renew. They just last until the end of the term you’ve taken them for. Generally speaking, it’s not in your interests to renew them unless you need a different type of cover.
Private medical insurance works a little bit like car insurance, in that you need to renegotiate each year. You may just stay with the one provider – certainly there’s a lot of advantages to that.
That’s particularly true if you’ve had cause to claim, or you’ve taken the policy on the basis that in the first two years you can’t claim for anything existing. You wouldn’t want to keep changing and restarting that two-year window afresh with a different provider. You would simply re-evaluate your arrangement on an annual basis.
How much does family private medical insurance cost?
It varies hugely. I wasn’t a great advocate of private medical insurance until the last five years or so. I’ve always been a great fan of the NHS and I still am, but in the current environment, it’s something that’s become more important to consider.
I personally have this cover as a director of a company. If I couldn’t work for an extended period of time, it would be catastrophic. It therefore became a bigger priority – and I have to say it cost less than I thought it would. It was more affordable than we were expecting.
You can also add on physiotherapy, counselling services, dental and optical if you wish to.
We’ve done pretty well as we’ve got a group policy, which was in no way expensive.
Is family private medical insurance worth it? What are the pros and cons?
I would say yes, it is worth it – and I’m a new convert to that. With the current position we’re in with the NHS, if you can afford this cover, it’s seriously worth considering rather than being at the mercy of NHS waiting times.
It’s relatively cheap compared to what you might expect. Should a catastrophic thing happen like a cancer diagnosis, it could offer reassurance, but it’s equally there for things like physiotherapy. You’ve got cover, so you can access that quickly when you need it. That’s quite important.
In terms of disadvantages, obviously it’s a cost. You do have to be careful about existing conditions and making sure you’ve got the right setup for your situation.
We’re also finding that some private facilities are getting booked up because more people are doing this. But it’s still extremely quick to be seen – there’s no two ways about that. It might just be a couple of weeks where previously it was a couple of days.
It’s not flawless. It can be a bit of a pain to make your claim, particularly if you’re just used to getting a letter through from the NHS. But it can be invaluable – that’s certainly been my personal experience, and it’s well worth considering.
What else do we need to know about family private medical insurance?
Just to reiterate that good advice is always a help. There’s a number of different things to navigate in setting this up, to make sure you’re getting the right outcome for your situation.
We don’t charge a fee for arranging this with clients. So you can benefit from our expertise without it costing you anything.
YOUR HOME MAY BE REPOSSESSED IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP REPAYMENTS ON YOUR MORTGAGE.
