Summary
If you're looking for Medical Insurance you must read this article. It's important to appreciate what will and won't be insured. Do your homework now and understand the pitfalls - it will help you choose the right policy.
Medical Insurance - Sorry, you're not covered!
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Medical Insurance is designed to provide protection for curable, short-term { cheap home insurance } health problems and allow policyholders to jump the NHS queues to see consultants, be diagnosed, receive surgery or be treated. That sounds fine, but before you buy you need to appreciate the treatments and situations that fall outside the scope of the cover.
But first a word of warning. This article does not relate to any { motor insurance } specific policy and the terms and conditions issued by individual insurers do vary. So please ensure you also check your policy documents. After reading this article, you'll know what to look out for!
Sorry - it's a chronic condition
If a condition can be cured and is not a long-term problem, your insurance company will classify it as acute and should meet the cost. If your problem is incurable or it's a problem that, despite appropriate treatment, will be with you for a long time, then your insurance company will classify it as chronic - and no, you won't be covered.
But deciding whether a condition is acute or chronic is fraught with problems. It's rarely a black and white decision and this can lead to a major area of conflict between policyholder and insurer.
It's clear that asthma and diabetes are chronic conditions { mortgage rates } as you're almost certain to suffer from them for the rest of your life. So those categories of illness are not covered.
Problems arise when Doctors initially consider a patients' condition to be curable, but the condition later deteriorates and the medical team changes its' mind, it's now become incurable. This can sometimes happen, especially in the treatment of certain types of cancer.
In these circumstances, the condition is initially defined as acute and is therefore insured, but deteriorates and becomes chronic - and outside the terms of cover. This is possible as insurers retain the right to reclassify a condition from acute to chronic during treatment.
Sorry - it's too long term
The insurance company will not pay out for long term treatment. But you need to check your policy documents to see how they define "long-term". You can find the situation where a course of drugs extends for say 12 months, but the insurer will only pay for ten months.
Sorry - it's preventative
Your insurance is designed to pay for the treatment and cure of conditions when they arise. It is not designed to pay for treatments that are used to prevent an illness.
Again, the problem of definition arises. Sometimes it is arguable whether a treatment is preventative or a cure. Take the drug Herceptin for example. { cheap mortgages }This drug can be used in the early stages of breast cancer. Research shows that Herceptin can halve the incidence of cancer returning for women who have a particularly virulent form of the cancer known as HER2. In this situation, is Herceptin offering a cure or is it a preventative?
Insurance companies are split on the debate. Norwich Union, WPA, BUPA and Standard Life Healthcare will pay for Herceptin for HER2 patients whereas Legal and General and Axa PPP will not.