Sickness/hospital insurance

pjred

I am now starting to get to an age whereby things start to go wrong.
I am in full time employment and unfortunately due to the contract I am on I do not get sick pay. Therefore I am wondering if there are any responsible companies out there that can offer policies for the possibility of illness or hospital treatment.

I don't intend going into hospital, I just want to cover any eventuality.

kingstreet

Unless you can guarantee you'll get something bad enough to warrant a hospital stay, I'd keep away from products which pay only if you are hospitalised - Hospital Saturday-type plans.

You should consider income protection, otherwise known as permanent health insurance. The better plans pay out a monthly benefit if you are unable to do your own job, after a set waiting period* until the end of the policy term, perhaps when you retire, or until you are fit enough to go back to work.

* The longer the waiting period, the cheaper the cover. So, consider keeping an emergency fund of several months worth of net income, so you can have a longer deferred period before benefits start.

InsideInsurance

pjred wrote: »

possibility of illness or hospital treatment.

Are you looking for income protection (Permanent Health Insurance) that would pay you an income whilst your unfit to work due to illness or looking for insurance to cover the cost of hospital treatment (Private Medical Insurance) so that you are back on your feet quicker (hopefully)?

Both products are sold by Protection insurance brokers and they will be able to discuss your requirements and recommend providers. Not all providers do a direct to customer offering and even those that do dont discount -v- their broker prices

pjred

Thank you! I don't intend having hospital/sickness but one never knows.
Just know that recently a couple of lads I know at work were off for more than 4 months (One is still off RTA) and I know that they have struggled a bit.
I would just like something in place that would cover approx 2/3rds-3/4s of my flat rate monthly pay?

InsideInsurance

Then income protection is what you want.

It comes in two flavours, the full fat version is PHI as already mentioned, which is underwritten when you take it out and so claims tend to be more straight forward and it will pay you the agreed amount up until your declared stopping age (normally the age you intend to retire at). You can reduce the cost by putting in a deferment period and you can also index link it so that the payout rise with inflation (along with the premiums).

The cheapo alternative is an Accident and Sickness policy, these will only payout for a maximum of 1 year (or in a few cases 2) and are not fully underwritten at the time of taking it out and so are more likely to have issues with pre-existing conditions at the point of claim.

Both policy types normally pay up to ~60% of your gross salary but as the pay is tax free the takehome will be almost the same, especially if your a higher rate tax payer. If you have a very large salary then AS policies may not be able to go to the level that you want/ require as in addition to the 60% cap they tend to have a max payout of a couple of grand where as PHI can go much higher

One of the IFAs normally comes on about now and points out that one PHI provider shows their average PHI claim is approximately 4 years or so which shows how AS is a much inferior product with its 1 year cap