So, how could health insurance from Freedom help you with NHS Top Ups?
Mrs A from London is diagnosed with breast cancer. She has private medical insurance with Freedom Healthnet and contacts the claims department. Upon confirmation of her condition by her consultant and approval of her claim, she receives a payment of £4,500*, tax-free. Mrs A decides to have her surgery on the NHS and keeps the money. She decides she wants to top up her NHS treatment by paying for a specific drug and uses the money paid to her by Freedom to fund this.

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*Please note: amounts are approximate

With the announcement this month from the Department of Health, allowing us to top-up NHS treatment, private health insurance companies across the UK are looking for ways to address this new market. The move means that patients may now be able to put money towards the cost of their healthcare if the NHS refuses to pay for all of it, for example where a particularly expensive drug might be concerned, previously subject to approval by NICE. Before, if a patient wanted to contribute, they would have had to fork out for the cost of the entire treatment; something that would have been too expensive for most people. But, while the majority of insurers are working to develop a private medical insurance policy to help people out in this situation, Freedom has a ready made NHS top-up solution that you can access straight away.

As a health insurance provider that offers cash upon approval of inpatient claim, Freedom’s policies work slightly differently to traditional health insurance. Instead of paying directly to the private hospital or facility where you received your surgery, Freedom gives you a cash lump sum which then enables you to use the money as you see fit. So, if you wanted to be treated in a private clinic then you could, but you could also choose to be treated by the NHS and use the money to top up the treatment that you would have received on the NHS. Freedom’s Gold Essential health insurance policy would be ideal, if you just wanted to be covered for this eventuality. Premiums start at just £10.88 per month and give you access to up to £30,000 of in-patient cover.

More information about health insurance & NHS Tops Ups.

Diabetes is very common in the UK. It’s one of those “it’ll never happen to me conditions” but with new research linking diabetes to slow child development, there is even more reason why you should have regular check ups, available with some policies as a benefit of private health insurance. The study by Laval University’s School of Psychology in Canada has found that women who develop diabetes during pregnancy are twice as likely to have a child with language development problems, particularly with vocabulary and grammatical skills. The leading researcher, Ginette Dionne, told science journal ‘Pediatrics’, “As mothers are having their children at a later age and the incidence of obesity in the population is on the rise, the rate of gestational diabetes is clearly increasing.”

There is no better time then to take out a private medical insurance policy, giving you access to in-depth health check ups that could pick up on such a condition. The symptoms of diabetes can often go unmissed and are not thought unusual – for example needing to visit the toilet more regularly and feeling more thirsty. This means that many cases of diabetes are not caught and can develop into a more serious version of the condition. If caught in time, some types can be treated purely by a change in diet, avoiding the use of insulin injections altogether; a thought that is daunting for many people.