Protecting your health is about more than protecting your body!

Just read this very interesting article from an industry colleague who argues that there are many different types of health insurance on the UK Market and to get total protection from all risks if you are sick, you need to think about more than just getting better!

Five Ways to Protect Your Health and Wealth With Insurance Against Sickness By Dave Healey

If you are unfortunate enough to suffer an illness, sickness or an accident at any time in your life, the consequences can be far reaching and affect your lifestyle and family for perhaps months or years into the future.
Primarily you will require immediate treatment and care for the accident or illness. You will also need to consider how to meet your financial commitments during a period of hospitalisation and recovery.
Furthermore it is wise to be recompensed for the unfortunate loss of bodily functions or if your contract a chronic or life critical illness.


Five ways to protect yourself and your family against sickness with Insurance:

1. Protect your personal health with Private Medical Insurance
Medical Insurance or Health Insurance is often called Private Health Insurance, Private Medical Insurance or PMI in the UK.
This type of cover provides quicker access to specialist consultants, hospital treatment and rehabilitation services, and is designed to cover the costs of and arrange remedies for treatable short term or acute accident or sickness.
It is however often restricted to hospitals owned by the particular insurance group. PMI is primarily bought to receive quicker treatment in nicer surroundings than is offered by the state system.
Many policies allow you to top up cover should you require additional treatment. Levels of indemnity or cover limits are quite often determined by the price you pay as a premium.
Policies are often sold with varying levels of cover under banners such as Silver, Gold and Platinum cover, and covers are extendable to other members of the immediate family.
Many UK employers provide what is known as Group Health Insurance plans as health care and medical cover for their employees, however this practice has declined since this became a taxable benefit.
It is important to note that nearly all of these types of medical insurance policies exclude pre-existing conditions and are designed for treatable conditions only.

2. Protect your body with Personal Accident Insurance Cover
Personal Accident Insurance or PAI as it is known covers the loss of various body parts and pays out a lump sum designed to help ease your immediate suffering.
Each limb or organ is priced and if you are unfortunate enough to lose for example an eye, you will receive the commensurate agreed benefit amount for the loss of the eye.
Many policies also pay out a lump sum on death.

3. Protect your lifestyle and wealth with Personal Accident and Sickness Insurance
Often known as ASU, these products provide a lump sum of money each month if you are unfortunate enough to have an accident or be sick, whether hospitalised or not, allowing various expenses and costs of your life style to be protected while you are ill and recovering.
These include income protection for your earnings, mortgage and loan protection for your debts and monthly outgoings and the more encompassing lifestyle insurance to protect all your finances, when you are sick.
These type of policies pay out an agreed monthly benefit commensurate with the amount of cover required.

4. Protect your future with Critical Illness Insurance
Basic medical insurance is designed to cover short term illness only.
Critical Illness or dreaded disease polices are a recent innovation in the UK Health Insurance market, having originated in South Africa.
You are covered under this type of policy if you are struck by one of a number of specified diseases, many of which are terminal and for that reason critical illness insurance is often sold as a bolt on cover with a life insurance policy.
Examples of the types of critical illness covered are Cancer, Heart Disease, Strokes, Parkinson's, and Multiple Sclerosis, to name but a few.
In the event of a claim, as with personal accident and sickness cover, you will receive a lump sum to help with the costs of the illness.
When sold as part of a life policy the lump sum payable on death is often reduced if there has been an earlier critical illness claim.

5. Protect your family with a hospital bed with Health Cash plans
Health cash plans where you make regular payments into a specific medical fund which entitles you to claim if the need occurs.
These cash plans have been available for some time in the UK and have been particularly popular in the areas of optometry and dentistry which are mainly privately funded outside of the NHS.
Recent innovative more affordable health insurance hospital cash plans are becoming very popular, mainly because they allow access to all the hospital services that are available under a standard medical insurance policy except that you are not tied to one hospital provider of medical supplier to provide that service.

As with all Insurance products it is now very straightforward to shop around and compare prices on the Internet.
Each individual person will have varying cover needs and it is important to compare insurance covers as well as premium prices. It is very important with all health and personal protection insurance policies to read the small print and online documents to be sure that you understand the exclusions to each particular health care coverage.

For more information and advice on all aspects of medical insurance visit UK Health Insurance. Compare health insurance quotes and various plans online.
Original Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Healey
http://EzineArticles.com/?Five-Ways-to-Protect-Your-Health-and-Wealth-With-Insurance-Against-Sickness&id=2697279

Hmm.... then there's sports accident insurance, lifestyle insurance, life assurance..........

Life is just one big hazard!

Beat the UK Hospital Queues with Private Health Insurance

The NHS is an admirable beast but can it really replace the need for Private Health Insurance ?

In the wake and reconstruction of Europe at the end of the Second World War, Clement Attlee's Labour government created the National Health Service, based on the proposals of the Beveridge Report, prepared during the height of the War in 1942.

A White Paper was published by the British governement in 1943 and was followed by considerable debate and resistance, organised mostly by the professional body of Doctors and Consultants, the British Medical Association.
When the the final BMA ballot amongst GPs and hospital doctors in England took place in May 1948 the majority of Doctors voted against the systems introduction!

The shape and structure of the NHS in England and Wales was established by the National Health Service Act 1946 and was devised and driven by the then Health and Housing Minister Aneurin Bevan.

The founding principles of the NHS called for its funding out of general income taxation and incredibly not through National Insurance.
Services would henceforth be provided by the same doctors and the same hospitals, however -

services were provided free at the point of use;
services were financed from central taxation;
everyone was eligible for care (even people temporarily resident or visiting the country).

This system worked fine in the early years however with the growth of the UK population with the baby boomer generation and a marked increase in immigration since the 1970's, coupled with the fact that health treatments have improved life expectancy of the indigenous population, the NHS has become increasingly strained in the resources it is able to deliver to patients, within an acceptable timeframe.

Although the recent Labour government has addressed some of the problems of overcrowding and waiting lists, the main problem with the NHS is that everyone can use it and its resources are finite.

Choosing a private health insurance plan allows you as the patient, more flexibility when it comes to your medical care, immediate access to care facilities and more importantly you do not have to worry that you might have to wait weeks for treatment.

As with any insurance, private health insurance is paid for by premiums, usually monthlu ongoing, and of course this will be on top of the national insurance contributions that you have to pay as an income earner to the government.
However when you consider the benefits and treatments that are available with private health insurance, the small monthly charge seems worth it for protecting yourself and your family when they most need it!

Going Private
Taking out the relevant private health insurance will guarantee you that you’ll get the services that you pay for. Private health Insurance cuts your waiting time drastically and having private health care means that if you fall sick or get injured, you will get seen to and treated immediately in confortable surroundings. Paying for this service does not necessarily mean that you’ll be treated to a higher standard than that of the NHS, however when you are hospitalised time is of the essence for treatment and recovery .
Private actually means private, and the treatment you will receive will usually be in a modern equipped private hospital in your area.
Most policies allow you the option of choosing who it is that treats you. Your place of stay is your own space where you can have visitors in confortable clean surroundings without the restrictions often found in NHS hospitals..
It should be remebered that Health Insurance is no different to other insurance when it comes to paying premiums, so if you pay for the minimum cover levels you will get the minimum covers available under the policy. If you spend that little more for the services you could need your cover will be more comprehensive.

There are many different health insurance and medical insurance providers in the UK, all looking for your custom, meaning there are a number of competitive prices available often with attractive side offers or additional covers for free.

Shop around and compare prices for health insurance quotes in order to get the best price. Use the Internet to compare policy details.

Beat the NHS waiting lists with private health insurance and grab yourself some piece of mind....