Take your hand out of my pocket

Something happened on Friday and I'm still steaming about it.

I get health insurance through my employer from a company called Vitality Life. I pay quite a lot for it - £76 a month - but it is an all singing and dancing policy that requires no medical, allows all pre-existing conditions, and the slate is wiped clean every year. It is taken out of my salary at source.

I decided to take it out 3.5 years ago for several reasons.

1) I only get 10 days full sick pay and 10 days half, so the longer I have to wait for medical treatment the less money I will earn.

2) I don't like the postcode treatment lottery, where I may not get the best drug to treat my condition because my local NHS primary care trust won't pay for it. With many private health insurers there are no limits like this.

3) At the time I had a very poor rural GP practice run by men in their mid-60s who thought the solution to all women's problems were antidepressants or having a baby. As these old fools owned all of the local practices and took turns in staffing them, I could tell anything serious would mean me contacting a private GP if necessary to proper medical care.

Vitality Life has a type of scheme where you earn points for exercising and you can exchange those points for discounts on goods and services. I never bothered because the discounts were for goods and services I never used or had no access to, and to track my exercise I would have to buy a special branded 'tracker' from one of their partners (how convenient) or use an iPhone app. As I had no desire to buy a useless gadget or expensive phone just to record I went for an hour's walk or did some weights I never bothered. And workouts like yoga or Pilates don't even register on the approved list of activities.

Then late on Friday a sneaky email went out to all staff to announce that all staff that had not engaged with the scheme would be subjected to an annual excess on claims of £250, so effectively a) calling them lazy because obviously anyone who hadn't engaged must be still sat on their bums and should be penalised and b) pushing them into either accepting this excess or buying a tracker from one of Vitality's partners to track their exercise to avoid it.

I'm afraid I saw red. This was no choice at all. Someone on a low income who wanted access to good quality fast medical treatment and not spend money they don't have on gym memberships or heart rate trackers would have to stick the excess on a credit card or, if they really couldn't afford, go through the NHS waiting times.

Then after some thought at the weekend I realised I'd made a bit of a mistake. What I haven't done, and should have, is revisited this policy to decide if it is still worth it.

I've had the 'security' of private health insurance with pretty much every office/lab job I've ever had, although this is the first one I've actually paid for myself. I say 'security' because lately I've started to wonder if it isn't some great con.

First, as far as cancer and heart disease are concerned, the NHS is just as fast and responsive as the private sector. In fact, chances are whether you are NHS or private the same consultant will treat you in the same time frame. Not for every condition but the vast majority of conditions and certainly the ones that are life-threatening.

Second, Martin and I both agree that is there is anything that we need urgently we will use our emergency fund to pay for it. So if one of us needs a drug or procedure that is 90% effective and three times the price of an NHS drug or procedure that is 70% effective, we'll pay the money for it. For us the extra 20% is worth paying for. In some instances that's the difference between life or no life at all.

Third, I now have a fantastic GP surgery that is fast, highly responsive and has a wide range of staff, including four paramedics, four physios, phlebotomists, and a range of very experienced male and female health nurses as well as umpteen GPs. In fact, our GP surgery is astonishingly quick when it comes to minor conditions. Martin's torn calf muscle was assessed by a surgery paramedic within 24 hours. He saw a physio within three days, had a further physio appt three days later, and then had a physio appt every week thereafter for six weeks unless healed. The physio sent a request to the surgery for sick notes and these were completed ready for pick up in three hours. I know some people who wait for weeks for just a physio appt.

Fourth, given how competitive the private health insurance industry is, it is getting harder and harder to make successful claims as there are a large number of exclusions and hoops to jump through. Whose to say if I ever made a claim it would be paid? Imagine paying all that money in premiums over years and your insurer refusing to pay due to a technicality.

So given all of that, why do I still have this all singing, all dancing policy?

I've missed a trick there haven't I?