Private health insurance for a newborn / before birth?

[Rhia30]

I'll add this question to this forum too. I'm 13+ weeks pregnant and we're planning health insurance as we want to get the baby a private health insurance. Do you have any advice how to go about it, who to go with? We'd like to set it up as early as possible, so that they can't exclude any pre-existing conditions that might appear in the first few weeks.

Is it common to set this up already before birth? Is BUPA the way to go?

Many thanks!!!

xxx

We have family cover through dh's scheme at work. IIRC newborns aren't covered (without going into the smallprint I think they have to be 6months +.

I would imagine that if you are in the UK and your baby does require medical assistance, that private healthcare can't compete.
www.bupa.co.uk/ has a helpline they'd probably be able to advise properly.

It says on the bupa website that you can add newborns to your policy.

Do you have specific reasons to think that your baby might be born with a health condition?
If you have reasons that you dont disclose then that might invalidate the cover.

NHS care for ill babies is usually very good, If I had a sick baby I would far rather they were under NHS care rather than private.

Our DC are covered by DH's private health insurance through work and I would highly recommend it!! We are insured by AXA PPP.
The first time around we too forgot to read the small print and ended up paying for private eye care for our 8 month old baby daughter. The second time around we were more thorough and took out the kind of cover on our son that covered all eventualities from the day he was born.
I think, if you can afford it, private healthcare for any child is a must. We have two very healthy children, but we've already used our cover on many occasions to sort out minor problems.
Therefore from own experience, I can only partially agree with tigger's statement above. Yes, "NHS care for ill babies is usually very good" ....BUT not always fast enough nor does it give the best/optimal care! "If I had a sick baby I would far rather they were under NHS care rather than private" - sorry, but totally disagree!!!
Just to give you a small example:
a simple tongue tie through the NHS would have meant waiting around 4 weeks for a half a day procedure under general anesthetic. Whereas through PPP, it was arranged within a day, and over and done with within 10 minutes under local anesthetic - BIG difference IMO!

Thanks all! We have no particular reason to think a baby would have a health problem but it's very common (as I'm sure you all on this side know haha) for babies to have problems with ear infections or to be diagnosed with chronic excema etc early on and I don't want something like that then to mean anything related to that will be excluded for the rest of their lives. Makes no sense to me, but to rather have it set up, for all eventualities from the day they are born. Awful things happen, and if they do, I'd want to be prepared. Waiting lists in NHS are often dreadful and I have no intention of making my child go through that if it can be avoided.

What sort of price range are we talking about here, roughly? I have no idea...

Is the best / only way to go include in a parent's insurance? We don't have private health insurance ourselves (I'd love to though).

If you have private health care, are you still entitled to full NHS treatment or can they actually refuse that? Nothing with NHS would surprise me and my personal experiences with health care in NHS are simply not good.

Rhia30
We haven't (so far) used our private health care to treat normal childhood illnesses. I'm only saying this because you mentioned one of the usual suspects, ear infections. For those, your local GP's surgery is just as good as anywhere else.
But you are right, you don't at all need a pre-existing condition. There can be lots of other things with your LO that can be just as scary and concerning for us parents. So far, we've been to see an ophthalmologist, a top Great Ormond Street dermatologist and had a tongue tie sorted out with our two little ones and they are only 1 and 3!!
With regard to your qs about being eligible for NHS health care - yes of course you are! After all, you still pay your NI and taxes !!!
There is one thing though, that?s probably worth mentioning: they don?t generally cover childhood immunization, should you decide to have single MMR jabs or extra non-NHS jabs for your LO.

this I think is also worth mentioning: my son's cranial osteopathic treatments were also covered by them!

TYhere are some schemes that are for children only i.e. not an add on to a parents policy. I was a claims assessor for PPP for many years and have to say that tiggerlovestobounce is right re the NHS being the best if a child is really sick.

with bupa baby was covered by my insurance for the first 7 or 10 days, i think it isn't possible to add the baby pre-natally!
i would agree that here in the uk any seriously ill baby will probably be referred to nhs care but if you already have private healthcare then it's quite simple to add a new baby too

We added both of ours to our cover the day that they were born. I also totally disagree that the NHS is the best place for children. I am sure that the care is good but private cover means that you see who you want, where you want and most importantly when you want. We have used ours for cows milk protein intolerance which was poo pooed on the NHS, for excema treatment that 6 visits to the GP couldn't fix, for an eye specialist where they gave a completely different diagnosis to the NHS investigation which I'd found poor from the start and to see an ENT guy about frequent ear infections plus after sitting in A&E for hours we saw a surgeon about my DS's severe stomach cramps. It also means that we always see consultants rather than the registrars and can always get a second opinion when we need one. There's no way on earth I'd rely purely on the NHS to look after my childrens health, it simply isn't good enough.

We have cover for our DCs. Used it once for DD when we thought she might have a hip problem. Have used it quite a bit already for DS who has a milk allergy and possible asthma. We have used it hand in hand with the NHS, for acute problems they have been really good but for chronic ones less so. For example, DS had pneumonia and the immediate care was very good but it then took 5 months for him to get a follow up appointment so we have taken him to see a private consultant rather than wait.

They are both on my work policy.

Hi guys, just thought it put some life back in this thread.
We want a private health care insurance for our upcoming newborn too. And I can't find anything, even on AXA or Bupa sites.
Now, besides the discussion NHS is good or not, we just want private insurance. It's a personal choice.
But we just want it for our baby, not on a family package or something. Is there anything available like that?
I mean, Kim Kardashian can insure her behind privately, surely I can get a policy for private health for my baby?
All we want is a cover for most general items and some extra's maybe like cancer cover, or similar, like major admittance things.
Very simple really. I'm European and I can just buy a policy "of the shelves" basically.
Just an annual newborn/baby private health insurance, with a little more than just the basic health care cover.

Any tips are welcome!

Paediatrics is one of the specialties with the fewest doctors working privately - relatively speaking medical problems for children are quite well-resourced compared with a lot of parts of the health service (though it might not feel it for families at all times and there are some glaring exceptions such as mental health and anything overlapping with social care / education provision).

Versus for things like adult orthopaedic surgery there is clearly a huge mismatch of supply and demand and therefore a big private sector.

All children's cancer care is NHS, as is anything involving admission to hospital or serious illness. Most serious problems unexpectedly detected in private consultations end up under NHS care. You are unlikely to encounter sudden and catastrophic medical expenses for a child so if it's particularly important to you, you are better off "self-insuring" ie putting money aside if you do think you might want to access private consultations in the future (which are expensive but not catastrophically so).

It is a somewhat different model than in many countries.

Just came across this old post. We have both of our children on our private medical now.

Before we put our first on the private medical insurance, stupidly.

Our little girl was wrongly diagnosed with epilepsy, by a pead doctor, I asked for a second opinion and was told my would never see a neurologist for it. I have epilepsy and the gp automatically sends adults to neurologists.

I had to pay a lot of money to a private neurologist who completely disagreed with the diagnosis, sent my little girl for two more tests and it was proven she didn’t have it.
The NHS doctor put her on meds for 6 months that she did not need, had I not got a private second opinion about it she would be on them for a minimum of 8-10 years.

I completely disagree that the NHS are the best place for children, absolutely add them to private medical insurance.

@Belle82

Just came across this old post. We have both of our children on our private medical now.

Before we put our first on the private medical insurance, stupidly.

Our little girl was wrongly diagnosed with epilepsy, by a pead doctor, I asked for a second opinion and was told my would never see a neurologist for it. I have epilepsy and the gp automatically sends adults to neurologists.

I had to pay a lot of money to a private neurologist who completely disagreed with the diagnosis, sent my little girl for two more tests and it was proven she didn’t have it.
The NHS doctor put her on meds for 6 months that she did not need, had I not got a private second opinion about it she would be on them for a minimum of 8-10 years.

I completely disagree that the NHS are the best place for children, absolutely add them to private medical insurance.

And which company are you with and what is the policy name of the insurance you've taken, that covered all of your 2nd opinion neurology bills?

@Pallemans
If you read my post I explained we were stupid not to have put my daughter on our private medical before this happened.

As I said in my post, I paid a lot of money to a private neurologist for a second opinion and it was worth every penny.

Obviously, as we did not put her on before it is a pre existing condition and will not be covered and I never said I had a private insurance which did cover it.

Hence why I completely agree with putting a baby on private medical as soon as possible!