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Health insurance : Hot topics

In "Hot topics", Ian Youngman, Private Healthcare UK's health insurance writer, examines some of the key issues that affect health insurance coverage and premiums.

Will insurers and consumers benefit from major healthcare reforms? The coalition government’s aim is to free up provision of healthcare, so that in most sectors of care, any willing provider can provide services, giving patients greater choice and ensuring effective competition stimulates innovation and improvements, and increases productivity within a social market.
The increased need to search for individual income protection insurance The new government has many ideas, but much of what they plan is based on a simple concept that too many people are passive. Over the last two decades, we have been bombarded with new laws, information, advice and much more, often from self-styled experts with no real experience of life. It is no use if you already know or suspect you will be losing your job, or if you run your own business. It...
Will new regulation work? Partly as a punishment for totally missing warnings on the banking collapse, as well as lesser failures to spot collapsing insurers and intermediaries, the government intends to transfer the regulatory functions of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to the Bank of England and certain proposed new regulatory bodies.
Term Life or Whole Life Insurance? In the last few years, the real price of life insurance has fallen. This has also meant a bigger gap between the cost of term life and whole life.
Do we need health insurance shops? In the USA, Highmark recently announced that it will open four additional Highmark Direct retail health insurance stores in Pennsylvania, including three stores in the Pittsburgh area and one store in Harrisburg.
Why tinkering with critical illness reveals fundamental problems in product design The Association of British Insurers and its working party, the group handling the statement of best practice for critical illness cover, wants financial advisers to help it find a new name for total permanent disability (TPD). It wants to know what the T, P and D should stand for.
A Healthier Nation Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, recently launched the Conservative Party’s green paper on public health - A Healthier Nation.
Personal health budgets Last year the Government pledged its commitment to creating a more personalised and responsive NHS by nominating 70 sites across England as provisional pilots for personal health budgets. Of these, twenty have been selected for an in-depth study as part of a wider evaluation exploring the potential of personal health budgets to benefit different groups of people. The study will be conducted by a...
NICE or nasty? If hospitals or doctors were able to use any treatment or drug they wanted, they would be under huge pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to use freebies and trials. Someone, somewhere has to independently test whether a drug works and is safe to use.
Insurers need to amend age limits Many insurers still have life, critical illness and income protection policies that stop paying out or cease cover, at state retirement age. Many more refuse to accept new business from people over 60 or 65, or even younger. Urgent rethinks on both are needed.
The future of private health insurance and the NHS NHS Confederation, the independent membership body, outlines in the conclusion of a report on the health service, the problems faced by the NHS in the spending squeeze,” The need to address the challenge is obvious, but action is required now and at all levels. Many staff will require new skills and approaches to help them do this. We will need to strip away the obstacles that stand in the way of...
Should health and life insurance be postcode rated? Aviva may be adding a postcode element to its life insurance premiums. The insurer is currently trialling the use of postcodes to illuminate the personal circumstances of its life customers, having already introduced postcode weightings on its annuity products, along with several of its competitors.
An older population will make insurers change The government has launched a strategy "Building a Society for All Ages", to help Britain prepare for our ageing society. It is long on political hot air and short on actual detail of what this means to us, and how we will pay for it.
The future of the NHS and private health insurance NHS Confederation, the independent membership body, outlines in the conclusion of a report on the health service, the problems faced by the NHS in the spending squeeze,” The need to address the challenge is obvious, but action is required now and at all levels. Many staff will require new skills and approaches to help them do this. We will need to strip away the obstacles that stand in the way of...
The problem of cancer on critical illness insurance Critical illness insurance began on the basis that it was cover should someone get a horrible illness. Nearly every person was expected to die. The aim was to bring comfort in their final years and ensure they and their family did not suffer.

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