Janine, 28, works as an estate agent in Reading. A single parent, she has a four-year-old daughter called Molly. Although Janine smokes, she is in good health. Molly is also a very healthy child, and is Janine's main priority. Janine is on a tight budget, but is willing to spend £100 a month on some private medical insurance cover. What options are available to her?
Hazel Gregory, Medical Insurance Services
The good news for Janine is that she has over estimated her health insurance budget.
There are several comprehensive policies below £100 that will provide her with full refund cover for inpatient, day patient, outpatient and additional fringe benefits.
As both mother and daughter are in good health, I would suggest that Janine carries some of the risk herself as this will reduce her premium even further. The money she saves by doing this should be set aside for when she needs to call upon it some time in the future.
Because of her financial constraints, I would not recommend a policy where her obligation was open ended. Janine will need to know from the outset that her part of the risk will be finite.
A comprehensive policy with an excess or a fixed-shared responsibility option will provide her with an equitable premium reduction and guarantee the amount she will need to pay herself. Alternatively, careful selection of cover from a menu-based policy would enable Janine to reduce the premium and pay only for benefits that suit her and Molly's requirements.
The fact that Janine is prepared to find £100 a month from a tight budget at this stage in her life indicates that health insurance is a priority for her. In view of this she may like to consider a policy that has no age-related premium increases as this will help to keep premiums down in the future.
Catherine McGrath, PruHealth
Janine has the choice of Comprehensive or Essential cover with PruHealth. The latter costs less but offers reduced cover outside of hospital.
With PruHealth, Janine can earn vitality points for managing her health more effectively. Everything from regular gym visits to downloading a healthy eating plan from pruhealth.co.uk earns points.
Even though Janine is a smoker, she is in good health and will probably qualify for the 17% starter discount for smokers who haven't claimed or been admitted to hospital in the last three years. If she opted for comprehensive cover with access to London hospitals, then the premium for her and her daughter, with the starter discount applied, would be £60.93 per month.
Even if Janine collected no vitality points at all in year one, she would still get 25 % of her premium off the cost of cover the following year, assuming she made no claims.
If she did claim she would get 25% of the unclaimed portion of her premium back. If her claim exceeded the cost of cover there is a maximum premium loading of 15%, although this is waived for those who achieve gold and platinum vitality status.
If Janine reached silver status and was claim free, her premium for comprehensive cover in year two would be £35.34 per month, assuming 8% medical and age inflation. If she reached gold status, making the same assumptions, it would be £20.11 per month.
Stephen Rose, SecureHealth
As Janine is on a tight budget she will be pleased to learn that she will not have to spend £100 a month to get a worthwhile level of PMI cover from SecureHealth for both herself and Molly.
Our modular Options contract costs around half this outlay for its broadest possible cover and it can probably satisfy their needs for around a quarter of it. All policyholders, however, must take a £100 excess.
For only £26.63 a month, SecureHealth Options can cover Janine and Molly for inpatient and day care treatment, limited outpatient treatment for up to £1,000 for specialist consultations and diagnostic procedures and for up to £1,000 for the major complementary therapies.
For £50.86 a month, cover would be considerably broader still. Outpatient treatment would be unlimited and the policy would extend to psychiatric treatment, childbirth complications, home nursing, private ambulance costs, parent accommodation charges and oral dental surgery.
Janine may wish to use the spare money she has to top up with our Platinum Cash Plan. This will cover her and Molly for an additional range of minor medical expenses, including routine dental and optical check-ups, and will more than make up the £100 excess costs for more mainstream treatments where cover is duplicated. The monthly premium for this is £35.00, which brings her total monthly spend to £85.86.
