Tricky situation with health insurance company

[IthinkIamAnAlien]

I'd be really grateful if anyone has an insight about this - so I've finally got a referral for heart problems (arrhythmia and bradycardia) which have been going on for about a year.

It's taken ages for my GP to take me seriously, I had a 24 hour monitor (Holter) which showed some problems (possibly minor in the GPs opinion) and because I persisted, he 'had a chat' with a matey cardiology consultant who said yes, refer her and that has just gone through.

My concern is that I'm with The Exeter who are a friendly society who do health insurance, I've just completed a year with them with no claims. My continued policy with them has just renewed on 1 February. The date of the referral is 29th January and someone has told me that I should have alerted The Exeter to the fact that I was having cardiology problems and had had a 24 hour test.

I'm not sure how to handle this. Making it worse, in response to my DH being a bit meh about continuing the policy which was costing £150 a month, I decided I was panicking and I emailed and said I wanted to end the insurance!

The earliest appointment I can get through the NHS is mid August and I would like to use the insurance but will they think I a) didn't inform them and b) decided to not cancel my insurance when I realised I had a potential problem. Thanks for reading.

Health insurance will go from the date you were first aware of symptoms for underwriting. If it was prior to the Inception of the policy, it won't be covered as it'll be classed as pre existing.

If you've only just cancelled the policy, it's likely that they'll let you reinstate it for continuous cover within a certain time frame. You'll need to bring payments up to date so there's no break in payments or cover.

Ultimately, you need to read the terms and conditions or call their retention team to get the full details. If you are able to return with continuous cover and your symptoms don't predate the Inception of the policy, then you should, in theory, be able to authorise treatment.

Insurance companies do their best to avoid paying anything out - in the renewal letter, I’m assuming it asked for any material changes since last renewal? If so, then you should have declared it, but on the other hand you would still have been covered under last year’s policy?

I'm a QC for a health insurance company, btw, so know my stuff 😉

Oh, and the above isn't true. If it's eligible, it's covered.

Thanks, I first began to notice problems last summer which were that my resting heart rate was strangely decreasing and it was October when I had a funny turn (palpitations, obvious irregular heart rate, dizziness) after an exercise session that sent me to my GP. In fact, I changed GP because the first one I contacted, rubbished that there was anything to be concerned about. The new GP listened carefully and consulted a cardiologist informally rather than refer and the referral came from that consultation. So it's kind of dragged on and it seems as though, because I'm not suffering chest pains and more persistent symptoms, it still isn't being taken seriously.

Hi @IthinkIamAnAlien , I have had a similar situation over the past couple of days - I have noticed my resting heart rate is low 70s when it is usually in the 80s, which is concerning me. What kind of rate is yours? What did the second GP think was the issue?