Aviva Global Treatment for £3 a month. Too good to be true?

muchembe

We are remortgaging and our broker has suggested insurance policies that include Aviva Global Treatment as a £3 per month add-on to our life cover. Is this worth the money? It looks very cheap given what the main MSE site says about health insurance being a luxury, so is it too good to be true? I'm also a bit worried that the add-on premium might rise in future as we get older, making our life cover less affordable.

DullGreyGuy

muchembe said:

We are remortgaging and our broker has suggested insurance policies that include Aviva Global Treatment as a £3 per month add-on to our life cover. Is this worth the money? It looks very cheap given what the main MSE site says about health insurance being a luxury, so is it too good to be true? I'm also a bit worried that the add-on premium might rise in future as we get older, making our life cover less affordable.

Do you understand the policy? It's not Private Medical Insurance.

It only covers 6 conditions and involves you going abroad for treatment, I suspect a lot of people would rather be close to family and friends when they are ill even if Botswana is seen as a centre of excellence for their particular condition. There is no cover for treatment in the UK (other than ongoing meds on return from overseas).

It's £3/month now but it's a 3 year policy so can be increased in the future. 

muchembe

DullGreyGuy said:

muchembe said:

We are remortgaging and our broker has suggested insurance policies that include Aviva Global Treatment as a £3 per month add-on to our life cover. Is this worth the money? It looks very cheap given what the main MSE site says about health insurance being a luxury, so is it too good to be true? I'm also a bit worried that the add-on premium might rise in future as we get older, making our life cover less affordable.

Do you understand the policy? It's not Private Medical Insurance.

It only covers 6 conditions and involves you going abroad for treatment, I suspect a lot of people would rather be close to family and friends when they are ill even if Botswana is seen as a centre of excellence for their particular condition. There is no cover for treatment in the UK (other than ongoing meds on return from overseas).

It's £3/month now but it's a 3 year policy so can be increased in the future. 

Thanks DullGreyGuy, tbh I'm not sure I can fully understand the policy without spending more time than I've got to read t&cs. That makes it really helpful to supplement my limited understanding with the perspectives of people who know about this kind of thing. There is one person with 1.5k posts about personal finance stuff on here who has said a few extremely positive things about this policy. When seemingly clued up people have differing views it is hard for the punter to know what is wisest. I am at least hoping my broker can reassure me that if the global treatment premium goes up excessively in future we'd be able to cancel that part without threatening the life cover part.

DullGreyGuy

Its technically a separate policy but one only to be sold as a bolt on to a Protection policy (Life, CI etc) so you'll be able to cancel it in the future without having to cancel the Life insurance. 

In principle it's interesting... it really comes down to if you'd be happy going overseas for treatment. The other point of note is that it only covers economy flights so you need to be well enough to take a commercial flight, they won't medi-evac you somewhere is you are very ill. 

Weighty1

Personally, as an insurance specialist, I think Aviva's Global Treatment is the best add on feature to be available in the insurance industry.  Over the 17-years I've worked as an insurance specialist I've dealt with a lot of clients who've suffered from things which would be covered under the Global Treatment service (cancer treatment, neurosurgery, heart valve replacement/repair and coronary artery bypass grafts and live donor organ transplants/bone marrow transplants) and the one overiding thing with those clients I've dealt with is at the time of their illness all they wanted to do was be treated and get better.  Any more they could claim from things like critical illness policies became secondary to them just wanting to make sure they were alive 1, 2, 5-years down the line and that's what Global Treatment tries to do.  Imagine being told you have cancer and the treatment for it isn't available on the NHS but then subsequently finding out that there is treatment available in the USA but it'd cost £200,000.  Would you just lie there having your palliative care, shrug your shoulders and think "oh well"?  NO, there's a good chance you'd want to try and have that treatment in America, but how are you going to pay for it?

I've seen quite a lot of gofundme pages set up over the years for people who've more often than not got cancer and need treatment overseas and the Global Treatment service means they would get it without any stress and ensure it was with the best hospital in the world for that particular condition.

The fact it also covers children until they are 22 means it's even better in my mind cos if one of my kids was diagnosed with cancer I'd walk over hot coals to get them the best treatment and again, this worry would be removed with Global Treatment.

I think your mortgage broker has done you a favour pointing this out.  What else are you going to spend your £3/month on?  A costa coffee, a mcdonalds double cheeseburger, a taxi journey of no more than 1.5-miles.  £3 gets nothing these days and YES DullGreyGuy is correct that it's a reviewable premium but the only chance that has ever been made to it is when the price REDUCED from £4/month down to the current £3/month so the cost changing is unlikely to be a major significance and if it did change you could always cancel that part of the cover anyway.

DullGreyGuy

Have you actually seen the policy in operation @Weighty1 or read its terms fully etc?

From my brief read it wasn't fully clear how it operated regards selecting a centre of excellence. Let's say you have a rare condition which can be treated in the US for £200,000, in the UK privately for £100,000 or in Rwanda for £70,000... Do you get the choice between Rwanda and USA or is that the insurers decision? Does the fact the UK is a centre of excellence prevent a claim given it only covers overseas treatment?

Would imagine challenging somewhere is a centre of excellence or not could be difficult if they wanted to ship you off to somewhere you don't want to go to for whatever reason. 

Weighty1

DullGreyGuy said:

Have you actually seen the policy in operation @Weighty1 or read its terms fully etc?

From my brief read it wasn't fully clear how it operated regards selecting a centre of excellence. Let's say you have a rare condition which can be treated in the US for £200,000, in the UK privately for £100,000 or in Rwanda for £70,000... Do you get the choice between Rwanda and USA or is that the insurers decision? Does the fact the UK is a centre of excellence prevent a claim given it only covers overseas treatment?

Would imagine challenging somewhere is a centre of excellence or not could be difficult if they wanted to ship you off to somewhere you don't want to go to for whatever reason. 

I've not seen it in operation with any of my clients (thankfully) but I've discussed it at depth with the Aviva BDMs and attended a few webinars on it over the years.  My understanding is that Further will come up with a range of treatment centres outside of the UK and the client can choose whichever one they wish. 

I'm also lead to believe that they simply won't come up with options in the UK, only overseas, so if the UK does have a centre of excellence then it would be up to the client to discover that themselves and see if treatment was available there, although it obviously may not be.  I can't imagine the UK being a centre of excellence would affect the clients ability to utlise the service as eligibility for it is based around the diagnosis only.

muchembe

Thanks Weighty1 and DullGreyGuy, that's really helpful.