The Life Saver of Private Medical Insurance
Nothing is more important than our health, so why should you or your family settle for a lengthy wait on an NHS waiting list?
Most airlines provide an option for Cabin Crew to buy Private Medical Insurance (or a variation of it), including additional cover options for immediate family members and your children. Sometimes, these can be expensive depending on the claims history of colleagues. We can help you look at a range of options alongside any workplace offering, to see if more suitable or cost-effective cover may be available.
What is Private Medical Insurance (PMI)?
PMI covers the cost of treatment for acute conditions (something short-term that is curable with treatment). Long-term, chronic conditions are normally not covered by a PMI policy.
The renewal process is similar to your car or travel insurance, in that it is renewable every year. Therefore, we help our customers review the marketplace every 12 months to ensure they are on the best deal for them.
How do group and individual PMI policies differ?
Group PMI policies that are put in place by employer’s work in a similar way to individual policies, however there are several key differences that are worth considering, particularly when looking to add additional cover for family members.
Basis of cover
A provider will offer group terms to an employer after considering factors such as the demographic of employees to be covered, their past claims history and whether pre-existing conditions should be covered.
If the group has a high claims history, the cost of cover is likely to increase when the policy is renewed. Conversely, a low claims history of a group can make that policy more competitive versus other options.
Underwriting
When looking to cover family members under the group policy, the same policy may apply a different basis of underwriting. For example, employees may have medical history disregarded, whereas partners and children could be covered under a moratorium basis.
Medical History Disregarded
Common on larger group policies, there is no requirement for any medical declaration and pre-existing medical conditions will be covered from the start of the policy. This normally covers the employee only, with additional family members added to the scheme being covered under a moratorium basis.
Moratorium basis (Mori)
This option provides the potential for pre-existing conditions to be covered.
Treatment will not be covered for any pre-existing (or related) condition for which you had any symptoms, treatment, diagnostic tests, advice, or medication in the five years before you joined the policy.
However, after the policy has started, should there be a continuous two-year period of no medication, diagnostic tests, treatment or advice, pre-existing conditions may then be covered, subject to the policy document.
Full Medical Underwriting (FMU)
The insurer uses information about your medical history to decide what cover can be offered before the policy starts. This would normally exclude pre-existing conditions.
Taxation
Employer provided PMI
For a group policy, the amount the employer pays (i.e. the amount to cover the employee) is considered as a benefit in kind (BIK), meaning you would pay income tax on this benefit.
As an example, if your employer pays for your PMI and it features as £600 on your payslip, a basic-rate taxpayer would pay 20% (£120), a higher rate taxpayer would pay 40% (£240) and an additional-rate taxpayer would pay 45% (£270).
Added family members
There is no exemption from income tax for PMI. When adding family cover to a policy and the payment is taken via salary sacrifice, there will be a National Insurance saving.
Tailoring of cover
Large employers would find it difficult to accommodate customised plans for all employees, so normally there is one policy for all.
For individual policies, it’s possible to customise cover to provide a more tailored solution and/or a saving on the cost of a policy; we will explore some of the options to do this below.
Choice of hospitals and medical professionals
A provider will normally offer the choice between a standard or extended list of medical facilities that you can make use of. Group policies are normally comprehensive in their offering, although they may still utilise the ‘guided care’ option (see below).
For individual policies, you can lower the cost of cover by choosing a standard list, or by removing some hospitals from your policy, such as those within Greater London, for example.
Guided care option
At the point of claim, you would call the insurer and they would provide you with a shortlist of hospitals (normally between three and five choices) for you to choose from, that are located within a reasonable proximity to your home address.
Six-week NHS Wait
Should the patient be claiming for an inpatient procedure that has an NHS waiting time of longer than six weeks, then the claim will be covered. If the waiting list is shorter than six weeks, then the patient will be treated on the NHS.
Policy Excess
Just like other insurance policies, the inclusion of an excess on the policy (the amount an individual will contribute within a policy year should a claim be made) will impact on the price of cover. Group policies will normally have these set at a given level, whereas individual policies can be tailored from zero excess, upwards.
Outpatient cover limit
You could opt between limited or full amounts of cover for outpatient diagnostics or treatment, where there is no use of a hospital bed.