Health Cover

You can’t put a price on your health or the health of your family, but the treatment you receive when you are ill can have a big impact on your recovery. Private Health Cover can be an ideal way to gain peace of mind about your future healthcare, and it doesn’t have to be expensive.

What is Private Health Cover?

Private Health Cover, also called Private Health Insurance, Private Medical Insurance or PMI, supplements the service provided by the NHS. Families and individuals with private health cover have the choice of getting private treatment if they don’t want to be treated on the NHS. ActiveQuote offers free health insurance quotes with its health insurance price comparison service.

Why choose Private Health Cover?

Private Health Cover is an alternative option to getting treatment on the National Health Service (NHS). Recent health insurance news revealed that there is a huge variation in NHS hospitals across the UK. Although some hospitals are meeting their waiting list targets, many are far below the recommended standard.

Even if you have a serious medical condition you may still have to wait to see a specialist. Bypassing NHS queues is just one of the benefits of having private health cover. There are many other advantages to private health insurance.

Benefits of Private Health Cover

• Private health cover will give you a choice of private hospitals, times and specialists.
• You will have your own private room with excellent facilities.
• Private health cover will help you avoid the risk of superbugs which are common in NHS hospitals. On this website we offer a FREE comprehensive database of private hospitals.
• Private health cover can give you access to drugs not available on the NHS.

Health Cover Policies

There are three main levels of private health cover used by health insurance companies.

Comprehensive policies are the most expensive type of health cover, but take care of all your eligible medical needs. They cover all diagnosis, treatment and aftercare, full inpatient, day patient and outpatient cover, and other benefits like psychiatric cover, dental cover, home nursing cover and complementary therapies.

Standard and budget policies are cheaper than comprehensive health cover. Standard or mid-range policies usually cover full inpatient and day patient treatment such as operations and selected outpatient treatments. Budget policies usually cover inpatient and day patient treatment but have limits on how much you can claim, and little or no out-patient cover.

Many health insurers are moving away from the traditional one-size-fits-all approach to health cover and offering a pick-and-mix scheme. This usually includes a core cover policy, supplemented by a choice of additional options.

ActiveQuote does not use the terms comprehensive, standard and budget as these terms are often misinterpreted or confusing. Instead, ActiveQuote clearly shows you all the options available from each insurer so you can easily get health insurance quotes tailored to you.

What type of Underwriting is Available?

As well as different levels of health cover, you can also choose your type of underwriting when you take out private health insurance.

The three types of underwriting are Moratorium (MORI), Full Medical Underwriting (FMU) and Switch or Continued Personal Medical Exclusions (CPME).

Your type of underwriting will make a difference to how you apply, and whether your existing medical conditions are covered on the policy, but this usually does not affect the price. Read our health insurance guide for more information about underwriting.

Are there Alternatives to Full Private Health Cover?

Lower cost cash plans are a cheaper alternative to full private health insurance. Cash plans will provide cash payments towards your private health cover rather than paying for it directly. You will still have to pay a premium for a cash plan, but like health insurance you can choose your level of cover.

There are also ways of reducing the premiums on your private health cover. Discount schemes can help you afford more expensive policies without losing the core health cover provided by the insurance. These include:

• Increasing your excess - contributing an excess to any claims you make will reduce your monthly premium significantly
• Co-payments - similar to an excess, but you pay a fixed percentage of the cost of treatment, up to an agreed limit
• A six week wait option - agreeing to be be treated on the NHS if treatment is available within six weeks will dramatically decrease your premium
• Reduced hospital cover - certain insurers offer reduced "hospital lists". If you're confident you would only ever use a hospital on a reduced hospital list, you can find a policy for much less

You can refer to our health insurance guide for a more comprehensive guide about discount schemes. If you decide to meet the costs of private treatment yourself without private health cover, you may find the costs will add up.

Factors to Consider when Choosing Health Cover

Can I choose a particular Private Hospital?

A frequent reason for purchasing private health cover is the guarantee of health cover for a local private hospital. If you have your eye on a particular hospital, make sure it’s included in your policy’s list of hospitals. Premiums can also vary depending on the hospital, particularly in London. It is important to make sure your desired hospital is within your price range.

On this website we offer a FREE comprehensive database of hospitals in the UK. You can search for hospitals by name, or browse by region, county and city to find out which health insurance policies provide health cover there.

Will Health Insurance Cover my Medical Condition?

Private health insurance will not cover the costs of voluntary medical treatment. ActiveQuote allows you to see the details of each policy and add options to cover extra conditions. We also provide a FREE comprehensive database of medical conditions. The database contains tips about what to look for in private health insurance to cover each condition.

Buying Health Cover

There are numerous ways you can purchase private health cover. ActiveQuote is the only true price comparison website for quoting, comparing and buying health insurance in the UK. Try our FREE online comparison now by clicking the Quote and Buy button at the top of this page.

What are the benefits of using a health insurance broker like ActiveQuote?

Sometimes online quotes can be hard to choose between. ActiveQuote is a British company that offers free, impartial advice from a team of advisers based in Cardiff Bay with more than 40 years’ experience in health insurance.

Under no obligation to buy, they can help you narrow down your quotes to find one that suits your needs and budget. There are many benefits to using a health insurance broker like ActiveQuote:

• People often need guidance when purchasing a health insurance policy. ActiveQuote can offer impartial advice about the entire health insurance market.
• An advisor is always on hand to assist you with any claims in the future if the insurers are reluctant to pay out.
• ActiveQuote will automatically renew your cover annually and contact you if there is a better deal available.
• ActiveQuote can often quote better prices than the insurance companies can direct because of our large share in the market.

ActiveQuote deal directly with the insurance companies and we'll never disclose your information to third parties. We're also authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), so you can rest assured that your private details will remain private.

If you have any questions about getting medical insurance, please feel free to get in touch. We'll be happy to help you out in any way we can.