Can You Get PMI After an NHS Delay

Hi everyone,

With NHS waiting lists being a hot topic, I've seen a lot of questions from people considering private medical insurance (PMI) for the first time. A common one is whether you can take out a policy to get treated for a condition you're already on an NHS waiting list for.

The short answer is almost always no. I wanted to break down why, as it's a critical point that's often misunderstood.

Private insurance is designed to cover new, acute conditions that arise after your policy starts. It doesn't cover pre-existing conditions.

So, what does an insurer consider "pre-existing"? It's broader than you might think. It's any illness or injury for which you have:

• Experienced symptoms
• Received medication
• Sought advice from a GP or specialist
• Had any treatment

This applies whether you have a formal diagnosis or not. If you've seen your GP about persistent back pain before taking out a policy, that back pain is considered a pre-existing condition and won't be covered.

Insurers also distinguish between acute and chronic conditions.

• Acute conditions are things that are expected to be resolved with treatment (like a hernia repair or cataract surgery). This is what PMI is primarily for.
• Chronic conditions are long-term illnesses that can be managed but not cured (like diabetes or asthma). Standard PMI policies do not cover the routine management of these.

So, while PMI can't help you with a problem you already have, it can provide peace of mind and faster access to treatment for new, eligible conditions that might come up in the future. It's about protecting yourself against future waits, not skipping a current one.

Full disclosure: these insights are from a guide I work on. I thought a summary would be genuinely useful for the community here.

For those of you who already have a policy, what was the primary driver for getting it? Was it for future peace of mind, faster access to diagnostics, or another reason altogether?

https://wecovr.com/guides/can-you-get-pmi-after-an-nhs-delay?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=rd-community