The best private medical health insurance policies and providers

If you're thinking about health insurance, here are some ways to see the policies and providers that are better than average.

When you buy an insurance product, you shouldn’t only look at price. It’s equally important to consider the level of cover you’re getting. And you should also look at the quality of the product itself. This is particularly true for private medical insurance.

That’s where ratings systems such as the impartial Defaqto Star Ratings come in. These Star Ratings assess products based on the quality and comprehensiveness of the features on offer and give a score from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).

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How policies are assessed

Defaqto looks at a number of factors before awarding a Star Rating. These include the following.

• The level of compulsory and optional excess you will have to pay for treatment.

• Whether in-patient and day hospital and consultant charges are included as standard.

• Whether the plan will place a time limit on cover for the costs involved in the provision of advanced cancer drug therapy.

• Whether there are restrictions on the length of time for which you can have cancer treatments.

Top policies

These are the Defaqto five-star rated policies right now, in alphabetical order.

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Top providers

The unbiased, anonymous feedback from you, our readers, via our annual lovemoney Awards is also important in highlighting the best providers.

Last year we ran a private medical insurance award for the first time and you voted Westfield Health as the top provider. Beneden, also one of the cheapest insurers out there, and PruHealth were runners-up.

Choosing the right policy for you

Of course, you also need to choose a policy based on the other factors we mentioned at the start too – cost and what it covers. For more on ways to make private medical insurance more affordable, have a read of How to pay less for private medical insurance.

And for more on whether it's good value for money, take a look at Private medical insurance: is it worth it?.

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