Best Health InsuranceSpecialist brokers say more solutions needed
Insurers need to do more to ensure that private medical insurance (PMI) remains affordable as clients get older and the NHS struggles to meet their needs, according to intermediaries and insurers.
Advisers have told Health Insurance that more could be done to help people fund private healthcare into their 60s, when they are more likely to need hospital care.
“We need constant innovation to invigorate the market,” said Debbie Kleiner-Gaines, managing director of Best Health UK. “We need to create reasons for people to talk to advisers and stimulate the medically insured to be inquisitive.”
Nick Jones, brand and marketing manager at Exeter Family Friendly, agreed.
“We need to put in place more flexible solutions that work with and complement the NHS, but also do so affordably,” he said. “Improving medical treatment and developments in expensive drugs has put pressure on PMI premiums. We need to find solutions to this by helping break cover down, so older customer can select what’s important to them; but not at the expense of clarity.”
NHS concerns
A “large proportion” of Kleiner Gaines’ clients are over the age of 60 and she suggested that they were motivated to take out PMI due to concerns about the level of care they might receive in the NHS.
“This is mainly due to the fact that they have had enough life experience to know of friends that have had terrible treatment and waited for treatment,” she said.
Damning reports exposing poor standards of elderly care in the NHS have hit the headlines in recent months. An investigation by the Care Quality Commission uncovered a culture that “allowed unacceptable care to become the norm, where it should have been an exception”.
Brian Walters of Cheltenham-based intermediary Regency Health, reports that half of his clients are aged over 60 and often cite concerns about hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and the possibility of shared wards in the NHS.
“We have seen a recent trend for older people entering or returning to the PMI market citing concerns about the NHS, but these concerns tend to be expressed in vague terms,” he said.
Although rates of HAIs have fallen to a record low, the elderly are more at risk. Most cases of MRSA and C.difficile are reported in patients aged over 75. The NHS has also made progress on eliminating mixed-sex accommodation, although patients may still stay on mixed-wards.
Policy design
While various tools can be used to reduce the cost of PMI, advisers warn that not all are appropriate for older age groups. Walters believes that premiums contingent on high no-claims discounts are “particularly unsuitable” for older clients because “they are more likely to claim in successive years and are more susceptible to getting ‘locked in’ to a single insurer”.
Exeter Family Friendly’s Jones also questioned the relevance of no-claims discounts, particularly for older clients.
“They can act as a disincentive to claim at the best of times, but at this age an early savings could soon be rendered useless for people over 60,” he said. “Choosing a provider with a good reputation for providing an empathetic and personal service is also important and may be increasingly so for older customers, who are more used to a personal service and indeed demand it.”
Tags: Best Health uk, Care Quality Commission, Debbie Kleiner-Gaines, Health Cover, Health Insurance, NHS, Private Medical Insurance
