Men are more likely to take out health insurance and consider it as important while people in Scotland are least likely to prioritise it, according to a new survey.
The findings from Health365 could challenge the perception that women are more concerned about looking after their health.
It found that nearly a quarter of men have health cover compared with only 15% of women and that nearly half of all men have had health insurance at some point in their lives, whereas only a third of women have held a policy.
The survey questioned people on their attitudes to health insurance, its perceived cost and what obstacles they faced in accessing cover and revealed how negative perceptions were putting people off taking out a policy.
Perhaps most worryingly for the industry, health insurance (12%) only ranked above pet (5%) and mobile phone (2%) insurance in terms of importance, while lagging well behind home contents (46%) and life (23%) and on a par with travel cover.
Almost two thirds of respondents (61%) viewed health insurance as expensive or a luxury and a quarter (23%) believed it was complicated and confusing.
This was exemplified by 62% of respondents being either very or quite put off buying the product by its cost, while 82% said they thought health insurers mainly used their profits to give bonuses to directors or pay shareholders.
And more than 40% of those polled thought it would take at least a day to get a health insurance quotation
The propensity to buy health insurance was also strongly governed by geography.
Just 4% of people in Scotland cited it as the most important type of insurance from a list including home contents, life and mobile phone insurance.
However, four times as many in London and the South East believed a health insurance policy should take precedence over the likes of pet and travel insurance.
Paul Shires, sales & marketing director at Health365.com, believes the results show there is a significant gender gap in accessing health insurance.
