Extending health insurance after employment
Discussion
Looking for some opinions or benefit of experience about what to do with our health insurance.
I've recently moved from a salaried job to into a contract role with a different employer, and as a result lost the subsidised health insurance that was a perk of the old role. This insurance applied to me and my wife as well. I've been lucky enough never to have any reason to use it, but my wife has had a few claims for minor things like carpal tunnel syndrome and a cataract. She works for herself and has no option for any health insurance through her own business.
The move from salary was redundancy, but amicable so my old employer has offered me the option to continue the old healthcare plan. There's no such benefit with the contract role, so it seems worth taking the insurance with me. The cost for the subsidised benefit used to be around £100 a month from my net salary, but the non-subsidised plan is about £230 a month. We can afford this.
The difficult part is that my wife has type 1 diabetes. It's currently well-managed with no complications, but from our attempts to get quotes it seems like this is impossible to insure, nobody will quote for covering her due to this condition. So it seems as though the option to continue the previously subsidised plan is a good idea. In fact it's the only option if we want health insurance.
So my questions are, is it worth shopping around and trying to find a quote that will work (my wife thinks this will be impossible or just hugely expensive), does the quote seem reasonable, and does anyone have any ideas about another approach that might work better?
I've recently moved from a salaried job to into a contract role with a different employer, and as a result lost the subsidised health insurance that was a perk of the old role. This insurance applied to me and my wife as well. I've been lucky enough never to have any reason to use it, but my wife has had a few claims for minor things like carpal tunnel syndrome and a cataract. She works for herself and has no option for any health insurance through her own business.
The move from salary was redundancy, but amicable so my old employer has offered me the option to continue the old healthcare plan. There's no such benefit with the contract role, so it seems worth taking the insurance with me. The cost for the subsidised benefit used to be around £100 a month from my net salary, but the non-subsidised plan is about £230 a month. We can afford this.
The difficult part is that my wife has type 1 diabetes. It's currently well-managed with no complications, but from our attempts to get quotes it seems like this is impossible to insure, nobody will quote for covering her due to this condition. So it seems as though the option to continue the previously subsidised plan is a good idea. In fact it's the only option if we want health insurance.
So my questions are, is it worth shopping around and trying to find a quote that will work (my wife thinks this will be impossible or just hugely expensive), does the quote seem reasonable, and does anyone have any ideas about another approach that might work better?
When I retired our AXA family cover increased from £100 to £400 a month overnight. And when we came to use it, it turned out that the claim to cover existing conditions was overridden by not covering chronic conditions, so we got basically a couple of consultations then had to find somewhere else for the required operations
Read the small print carefully
Read the small print carefully
My suggestion is to consider "self insurance". Find out what your likely health insurance premium will be. If it looks "cheap" then by all means pay it. If it looks "expensive" then round the figure up to the nearest £,000 and invest that amount in a safe place as the start of your "healthcare fund". Then add to that fund each year that you, hopefully, have good health.
It's really the same thing as running a car without an expensive extended warranty.
The catch with health insurance is that it gets more expensive as you get older so even if the initial premium is cheap they'll eventually be raiding your wallet. In contrast, if you have you have your own healthcare fund it will hopefully be growing each year. Also, like car insurance, making a claim tends to increase your premium because you're seen as less healthy.
It's really the same thing as running a car without an expensive extended warranty.
The catch with health insurance is that it gets more expensive as you get older so even if the initial premium is cheap they'll eventually be raiding your wallet. In contrast, if you have you have your own healthcare fund it will hopefully be growing each year. Also, like car insurance, making a claim tends to increase your premium because you're seen as less healthy.
Providing the current scheme allows full transfer with no additional underwriting or exclusions added that will be your easiest and probably cheapest solution.
The alternatives would be to contact a broker like Clarity Health or USAY and see what they can do.
When I stopped work I contacted the old provider direct who agreed to continue with full cover but I also checked the price out with Clarity.
On renewal I went straight to Clarity and ended up switching Insurers.
We now pay the cheapest since the first policies taken out 4 years ago.
If you go for a larger excess the price not surprisingly reduces.
I view PMI as “ catastrophe cover “ so buy it accordingly.
The alternatives would be to contact a broker like Clarity Health or USAY and see what they can do.
When I stopped work I contacted the old provider direct who agreed to continue with full cover but I also checked the price out with Clarity.
On renewal I went straight to Clarity and ended up switching Insurers.
We now pay the cheapest since the first policies taken out 4 years ago.
If you go for a larger excess the price not surprisingly reduces.
I view PMI as “ catastrophe cover “ so buy it accordingly.
I went through this with my former company's health policy under Axa. They made a big deal about continuity and the same level of cover etc, even a dedicated team to hand me over. Turns out the cover was the same apart from pre-existing conditions, including anything that had already been claimed on through the policy. So we lost cover for anything we'd have continued to be covered on under the corporate policy.
It was basically just a new customer quote in reality. Fortunately we had nothing particularly onerous to worry about but the principle was annoying.
My understanding is that for large corporate policies it is easier to just have blanket cover than try and work out what every individual will or wont be covered for, and therefore what they pay. Individual policies its easy to do unfortunately!
It was basically just a new customer quote in reality. Fortunately we had nothing particularly onerous to worry about but the principle was annoying.
My understanding is that for large corporate policies it is easier to just have blanket cover than try and work out what every individual will or wont be covered for, and therefore what they pay. Individual policies its easy to do unfortunately!
Someotherusername said:
I went through this with my former company's health policy under Axa. They made a big deal about continuity and the same level of cover etc, even a dedicated team to hand me over. Turns out the cover was the same apart from pre-existing conditions, including anything that had already been claimed on through the policy. So we lost cover for anything we'd have continued to be covered on under the corporate policy.
It was basically just a new customer quote in reality. Fortunately we had nothing particularly onerous to worry about but the principle was annoying.
My understanding is that for large corporate policies it is easier to just have blanket cover than try and work out what every individual will or wont be covered for, and therefore what they pay. Individual policies its easy to do unfortunately!
We had small business group cover with AXA and the premium was immense. I dropped out in my 60's when, for wife and I, it hit £14K. When I dropped off the scheme, AXA contacted me and offered to continue the cover - cost was the same. It was basically just a new customer quote in reality. Fortunately we had nothing particularly onerous to worry about but the principle was annoying.
My understanding is that for large corporate policies it is easier to just have blanket cover than try and work out what every individual will or wont be covered for, and therefore what they pay. Individual policies its easy to do unfortunately!
Got cover with Aviva without covering pre-existing conditions etc, for £3K.
Gassing Station | Jobs & Employment Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff