Individual health insurance coverage provides for the treatment of a single individual in private hospitals and wards. One of the great advantages of having a policy just for yourself is that you can select the exact plan that is right for your situation.
Key features of health insurance for individuals
- Health insurance covers medical treatments, tests and consultations in private hospitals and wards.
- Basic plans cover treatments where an overnight stay in hospital is required or medical supervision is needed.
- In addition to the cover provided by basic plans, comprehensive plans are more likely to cover in full treatments, tests and consultations that do not require an overnight stay in hospital (including physiotherapy).
- Comprehensive plans are also more likely to cover additional benefits, such as alternative medicine, private ambulance, overseas cover, dental surgery and home nursing.
- To reduce the premiums charged you can opt to include an excess or implement a six week wait option, which states that you agree to receive treatment on the NHS if the waiting list is less than six weeks long.
Your individual health insurance options
Individual health care insurance can be tailored to suite your requirements. Policies range from basic / affordable to comprehensive. The coverage offered generally falls into three main categories: inpatient, outpatient and additional benefits. As the plan moves from basic to comprehensive outpatient cover and additional benefits are increased.
Inpatient cover
This type of coverage is for treatments, tests and consultations that require an overnight stay in hospital. Inpatient cover is the core aspect of all private medical plans and full cover is provided by even the most affordable plans. For example, if you needed to have surgery, possibly for a heart condition, that requires an overnight stay in hospital then it will be covered in full even on a basic plan.
Outpatient cover
This type of coverage relates to treatments, tests and consultations for conditions that do not require an overnight stay in hospital. For example, you might go to the hospital for a scan or to have a mole removed and then leave afterwards.
Physiotherapy is also classed as an outpatient treatment. The level of cover provided for outpatient treatments does vary quite significantly between affordable / basic and comprehensive plans. Most basic plans will provide some capped level of cover whereas comprehensive plans will usually provide cover in full.
Additional benefits
Health insurance for individuals comes with varying degrees of additional cover depending on what policy choice you make. Additional benefits include alternative medicine, private ambulance, overseas cover, dental surgery and home nursing. Naturally, the more comprehensive the policy the more coverage is provided.
If you wish to include any of these additional benefits we can usually select policies that provide this cover, whether you choose to select a basic or comprehensive plan. However, it should be noted that with an affordable plan the inclusion of one additional benefit may mean the exclusion of another, whereas some comprehensive plans include all of the above named benefits.
It is really important to consider the coverage offered by each individual health insurance policy as it really can vary significantly. To provide you with one compelling example, out of the 11 basic plans that we broker 8 will provide full cover for outpatient radiotherapy/chemotherapy, 2 provide capped benefit and one provides no cover at all. If you need any assistance at all please feel free to call us to talk through your policy options with one of our health experts.
Individual health insurance plans
In the marketplace today there are a large number of policies available and it is very rare that two policies are ever the same. Although this can be confusing it also provides a great opportunity to select a policy that fits well with your ideal. For example, it is possible to specify that you want an affordable plan that has great cover for physiotherapy as you are a keen sportsman, or a comprehensive plan that excludes home nursing as you have a loving partner who can look after you if needed.
Another important example is to do with your location in the UK, if you are based outside of London then you might be interested in excluding London hospitals which would lower the quoted premiums, thus enabling you to make savings or take out a more comprehensive health insurance plan for the same rate. It is by this process that we can filter down the plans to a suitable policy that is individual to you. In this respect health insurance for individuals can be whatever you want it to be.
If you have a family you may decide that it is worth including your loved ones on your policy. In a similar way to individual health insurance cover, we can filter down the policies to find a plan that suits the needs of your specific family. It is worth considering as child cover is usually about half the price of an adult policy. Please let us know if you would like to compare quotes for this type of policy alongside your individual policy quotes.
Next steps
We are whole of market health insurance brokers who aim to provide a very individual service. We understand that every client is different and this includes having varying views about what constitutes the best medical plan. We broker over 35 plans from the UK’s leading medical insurers.
The insurers we consider include BUPA, AXA PPP Healthcare, PruHealth, Standard Life Healthcare, Aviva and more. Rest assured, we will find you affordable individual health insurance quotes for plans that suite your specific requirements and at the most competitive rates.
If you have any questions, require some more information or simply want to compare competitive quotes then please feel free to contact us, we are here to help however we can. Other useful resources can be found in the consumer section of the Association of British Insurers site or for more information about healthcare in the UK visit the NHS choices site.
