How do I Apply for Cover?
To apply for health insurance you first of all need to make sure you have got the provider that is best suited to you. Of course you will not be able to get the full details of what they offer until you apply to them; however you will be able to get some insight into their service by going online and seeing what people think of them. Once you have decided which provider to go for you can make your application online or by post, by filling out a hard copy and sending it to them or by downloading an application form and emailing it to them.
Filling out this form is often unfortunately a bit of long process. As private health insurance providers have to be very comprehensive in understanding all the medical conditions that you have they will ask you to list a whole host of medical conditions or other procedures that you may be considering. All of these questions will be included in your application form along with some questions about your address, job, income and other bits of information.
How Providers Assess Your Application
Once you have filled this form out and sent it to your provider they will have someone go through all your medical details and then verify that you have not been dishonest about any conditions by contacting your current GP and accessing your medical history through them. It is thus best advised not to lie on your application form about medical conditions because your provider is likely to find out about them by going through your medical history. After verifying your conditions, they will then have someone who will assess the cost of your medical conditions, the likelihood of you making a claim with them as well as how often you would make a claim and how much all of this would cost them. These estimates will then influence the monthly premium that is put onto your cover. The principle your provider will when deciding whether to approve your application or not as well as how much they charge you every month if they do approve your application is, how much you could cost them.
If you have a long list of medical problems in the past and have a dangerous job they are likely to increase your premium or completely reject you. This is because these things increase the likelihood of you having to make a claim with them and if these claims are really expensive, it is not in your insurer's financial interest to accept you as a policyholder. For example if you have a particularly dangerous job which could result in injury on a very frequent basis you are likely to be rejected or at the very least be offered a high monthly premium on your insurance. If however your job is not a dangerous and you have a clean state on your medical history, you will be accepted without much question and your premium shouldn't be too expensive.
How Long Will It Take?
It will take a few days to a few weeks for your provider to finally come up with an assessment of your application. Once they have decided whether or not to accept you as a policy holder and what the monthly premium of your insurance will be, they will get in contact with you. This is likely to be through by means of a letter through the post. Hopefully when it comes through the letterbox you would have been approved for your insurance and will have low monthly premiums.