Will Adding a Spouse Increase my Premium Costs Significantly?
The benefits of getting private healthcare insurance are plentiful, short waiting times, better care and better access to doctors are just a few examples of such benefits. If you are married and your partner has not experienced the benefits of healthcare insurance you may want to have them added to your insurance policy to get them protected. The key thing to take into account when you want to add your spouse to your healthcare policy is that the likelihood of your spouse needing medical help is going to have a huge affect on how much or how little your premium will go up. If your husband or wife have a job occupation which is not threatening or dangerous and they are fit and health, your premium should not change too much. However if they do have some health problems your premium will go up in accordance with the severity of the health condition that they have.
What's Their Health Condition?
When adding your spouse to your health insurance, the application process they will go through will be quite a detailed one, with all previous conditions checked up on and all potential illnesses uncovered. If your spouse does have a serious health condition this will become evident to your healthcare insurance provider quite quickly. In circumstances where people try to hide their health condition to their healthcare insurance provider they are almost always found out. This is because your healthcare insurance provider will go to the GP of the individual who is taking out a policy and they will be given access to a detailed history of all past medical examinations and conditions.
Different Providers, Different Premiums
The extent to which your premium will go up as a result of having your spouse added not only depends on the health conditions of your spouse but also largely on the health-care insurance provider you are with. Health-care insurance in the UK is quite a varied market in terms of prices; some providers will give a significantly lower premium than others on one condition and then give a significantly higher premium on another. It all comes down to the way your health-care provider assesses how much of a risk your spouse poses to them.
If they come to the conclusion that your spouse is going to cost them a lot of money they will raise your premium accordingly. If you spouse has a serious enough health condition it may even be the case that they flat out deny them any access to your health-care policy. They take such actions if they judge that the medical costs that will be incurred as a result of adding your spouse will be too high to justly taking them on in the first place. This is one of the main drawbacks of private health-care insurance; it is treated like a business with the main objective being making money, unlike the NHS which has the objective of improving public health.
If you are very keen to have your spouse get some private health-care insurance, it may be worth exploring the other providers other than the one that you have chosen to go on. Your provider may give you a high premium but another may give an overall better deal for the both of you. In any case, whether you decide to stay with your current provider or to get your spouse cared for from another one, all providers will assess their decision on how likely it is that your spouse will need continual care.