Accident / Sickness insurance for self employed worker, are we being conned?

kr15snw

OH has insurance with combined insurance. He's a self employed builder and also the bread winner for the family. The idea was he gets covered for pretty much everything so that if he's ill / injured we don't miss out on his wage.

At the moment he has the highest possible cover (including both sickness and injury) at about £750 a year.

Recently he was off work ill with what turned out to be severe cluster headaches. It left him in constant pain, sickness and the unability to move. He was off work for 5 weeks and was admitted to hospital (out patient) on 2 occassions and saw his doctor twice a week during this time. It took them 4 weeks and many different medications to work out what it was and to fix it.

So as you can imagine we put in a claim. His GP and the local head of neurology at hospital filled out the forms and sent off all the evidence needed. After 5 months they have finally contacted us to say he has been awarded £120! 5 weeks off and £120?! This works out at just under £25 a week, how on earth does this cover any living costs?

The whole point of this insurance policy is to cover him when ill / injured, but they are not doing that. Is there any point continuing to pay or should we tell them to sod off and cancel the entire policy?

Quote

Definitely tell them to sod off and cancel the policy. I imagine that will resolve the situation to everyone's satisfaction.

kr15snw

Is it worth trying to get cover from somewhere else?

dunstonh

how on earth does this cover any living costs?

its not meant to. There will be a deferment period that means you self insure for that period. Typically its a minimum of a month but these combined insurance plans are often non conventional so have some weird things. Some Combined plns only pay out of the days in hospital and not the time off.

The whole point of this insurance policy is to cover him when ill / injured, but they are not doing that.

You should have bought a policy that did that then. You dont buy a tin of baked beans and expect it to be Tuna in the tin.

The whole point of this insurance policy is to cover him when ill / injured, but they are not doing that. Is there any point continuing to pay or should we tell them to sod off and cancel the entire policy?

Sounds like you have a policy that doesnt cover the needs you want. (i.e beans and tuna ). Rather than see insurance company reps from tied companies that offer products from Combined or similar, get an IFA out to review what you want, what you have and what you should have.

jamesd

Ask them to explain how they arrived at the £120 figure. That should tell you how deferment periods and whatever else was used to work out the payment.