Health insurance is not in good health

Insurance is one of those things you don’t need until you needed it. Then, maybe, if you are lucky, you’ll be glad you got it.   And then you might find there is something in the small print that suggests payment is not an option.  Nowhere is this more of a problem than with life insurance protection.  You have to make sure you die of something not mentioned in the small print.

It doesn’t get any easier when choosing health insurance.  The first problem is deciding where to go – assuming you are thinking of buying health insurance for yourself.  Most of us have heard of BUPA health – but tapping private health insurance into Google soon reveals other companies such as Zurich health cover – and the question is, what to do they offer?

Maybe the first question is to decide if you want medical health insurance or family health insurance.  I guess it depends if you have a family or not.  But if you feel you need health insurance – then you don’t have much faith in the NHS.

The NHS is one of this country’s sacred cows.  We’re supposed to feel proud of it and ignore the fact that funding issues mean the best treatments in virtually every treatment area are not given to you.

If you have osteoarthritis your doctor is instructed to offer you paracetamol as a first line treatment.  And god help you if you have something really nasty like Kidney cancer.

Need IVF?  Well, maybe, if you are lucky the NHS will offer you one course of treatment.  But strangely a breakthrough fertility monitor such as Duofertility is not even recognised by the NICE guidelines. Granted it costs around £500, which is not exactly cheap… but that’s one tenth of the course of a single course of IVF.

Like everything else the NHS is target driven – and only a few conditions are considered worthy of priority.  Breast cancer is worth a few votes…but not so much kidney cancer.  Heart disease is a priority – but maybe not prostate cancer.   And hey – don’t even mention Dementia.

Dementia is a bit of a problem – but not if you pretend it is a social issue.  Even better you can make dementia sufferers pay for their medical care right down to selling their own homes.  And if you know someone in your family who has dementia I bet you already don’t think very much of the NHS.  But here’s the rub…. Health insurance won’t be much help to you either.  Just check the small print.