guests agree claimants should see their medical bills
Insurers need to hammer home the cost of medical treatment to policyholders if they are to understand the true value of their cover, according to the latest COVER Think Tank.
The debate, which asked what the future holds for private medical insurance (PMI), saw one insurer back plans to show claimants medical bills following their treatment.
Standard Life Healthcare's spokesperson Julian Ross said better information about the cost of treatment was an area the insurer should look at.
"It is ironic for those of us who have tried to make claims easier for customers. You try to create a better user journey, with excellent service from beginning to end and everything is perfect - but we aren't good at telling them how much it cost," said Ross.
Other guests at the roundtable agreed. Dr Thom van Every, chief medical officer at recently launched PMI provider PatientChoice, said more education on medical costs could help policyholders to choose more appropriate cover.
"The problem is that the consumer doesn't know how much medical treatment costs so there's no way for them to define whether a fixed benefit or an excess is worth having," he said.
Peter Bye, director of the Private Health Partnership, said cost would not be such a barrier to sales if clients understood how expensive treatment was from the outset.
"It's not necessarily true that the general public can't afford the product. What is true is they can't see the value in it," said Bye.
Guests also raised concerns about the trend for people to opt out of insurance in favour of the self-pay route. Again, the lack of knowledge into treatment costs was seen as a growing problem.
"If people are thinking of self-paying we say it's fine if you have one medical catastrophe, but not if you have three things that need treatment," said Stephen Walker, chief executive of Medical Insurance Intermediaries.
Bye said showing claimants medical bills would help boost customer satisfaction. "Where people are self-paying they can recognise the value immediately. They know the hip has cost them £8,000. It has more of an immediate impact," he said.
