How to cut the cost of Health Insurance

You may have had your renewal premium through for your health insurance and noticed an increase in your premium. In this document we look at some of the possible reasons for this and how to combat them.

According to the market-research group Datamonitor, medical inflation is the reason for yearly increases of 8% in health insurance premiums. The steady progress in the development of new drugs, therapies and equipment used to diagnose medical conditions and the resulting costs are an obvious reason for this. This is understandable and everyone wants the latest in diagnostics and treatments. Equipment becomes obsolete with time and invariably the very words newer and improved mean a rise in cost.

One of the reasons your premium may have increased is to do with your age, insurance risk increases with age, therefore this could have been the reason for the increase in premium. Most of the health insurance providers set their premiums in age bandings, so it is likely that someone aged between 50 and 59 would pay their normal agreed premium. Once you reach 60 then you go into the next band, this can sometimes have a quite dramatic effect on the premiums, with some providers this can increase by as much as 50%, and therefore it is wise to shop around by using a health insurance intermediary.

Some health insurers have chosen to smooth out the increases on a yearly basis. What this means is that you only get a small percentage increase due to age.

One of the quickest ways to cut your health insurance premiums is to increase your excess on the policy, increasing the excess from £100 to £250 could with some insurers slash your premium by 10%. This is because you are less likely to make a claim on your policy.

Many of the insurers off No-claims discounts similar to motor insurance policies, if you have not made a claim you build up the discount each year. There can be as much as a 50% saving on premiums. You should be able to transfer this if you decide to change providers.

A few providers now have what is called the ‘6 week option’ for a lower premium. The difference is that if the NHS delay for your in-patient or day-patient treatment is less than six weeks you will need to use NHS facilities as a non-paying patient or self-fund any private treatment. If there’s an NHS delay of six weeks or more for the operation or treatment you need, then cover is provided by the policy. This ‘6 week’ option allows the premiums to be kept much lower.

A health insurance intermediary will shop around on the open market and find you the right cover at the right price, don't lose that valuable cover by cancelling your health insurance, go online and find a specialist intermediary.