How much does health insurance cost?

Your personal circumstances play a part in deciding your premiums. An insurer might consider:

• Your age: the cost of cover may increase with age, as you may be more likely to need to make a claim the older you are.
• Where you live: private healthcare costs more in some areas of the UK than others, so your home location may play a part. It’s things like the facilities, accommodation and equipment that affect this, along with specialists’ fees.
• Your claim history: the number of past claims you’ve made on a policy may impact your premiums at policy renewal time.

When you apply for cover, there are a few ways that you can help shape your policy, and your premiums.

Policy options

If you're given options to help personalise your health insurance, you can focus on your priorities and what suits your budget.

With our health insurance, you can choose different options to reduce or enhance core cover. You decide which options are included on your policy, depending on what's important to you, or you and your family.

Whichever you choose, in-patient and day-patient hospital treatment and specialist fees, extensive cancer care, and some out-patient benefits like surgical treatment and post-treatment diagnostic scans are included as standard.

If you want to enhance your cover, you can add options like mental health in-patient and day-patient cover, and other treatments and therapies.

Of course, adding extras to your core cover like routine dental treatment and optical expenses can increase your premiums while choosing more basic cover can help reduce what you pay.

Regardless of the cover you select when you take out our health insurance you can also use the Aviva Digital GP app*, provided by Square Health to book virtual GP appointments when it works for you.

You'll have access to a Stress Counselling helpline and Get Active* which provides access to savings on gym services, discounted lifestyle products, and offers at over 4,500 nationwide health fitness clubs ^{Footnote [1]}.

* These services are non-contractual and can be withdrawn or amended by Aviva at any time.

Family cover

If you also want to cover your partner and any children, your premiums may be higher than if the cover is just for you – although it could be cheaper than taking out two individual policies.

And, if you have two or more children aged 19 or under and add them to your policy, you'll only pay for the eldest child until they turn 20 ^{Footnote [2]}.

Switching your cover

You may think about switching your policy to another provider if you want different features, or a lower price than your renewal offer. Make sure you’re still covered for everything you need, though. 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the number of choices and options you have with health insurance, you could start by considering your budget. Then think about what's important to you and get a few quotes to compare your options.

Healthcare can cost a lot to carry out. Even straightforward procedures can be surprisingly expensive. Insurers like Aviva need to take account of this, among a number of things, when we work out your premiums.

You don’t need private health insurance in the UK, but it can help you get medical treatment faster when you need it. With flexible cover, you can tailor your options to suit your needs and your budget.

Health insurance premiums aren’t fixed and may increase over time.

One reason for this is that the cost of medical treatment increases over time, which is known as medical inflation. Important medical innovations that make treatments more effective may be more costly.

Also, insurers need to make sure that customers’ premiums reflect the overall cost of claims. Any pressures on healthcare services, such as more people living longer, can also contribute to increases in premiums. We take all this into account when we balance costs, to make sure you still get quality healthcare for the premium you pay.

Added to that, you’ll be a year older at each policy renewal, which could also make your premiums rise. That's because as you get older, you may be more likely to make a claim.

Any claims you make on your policy may have an impact on your premiums, unless you've protected your no claim discount. Your insurer will let you know about any changes before your annual renewal. With our health insurance you can choose to protect your no claim discount.

 

There are a few ways that you may be able to reduce your premium.

Reduce what’s covered

With our health insurance, you can reduce your cover and remove some options, to make your premiums lower. Here are some of the options you have to adjust your cover:

• NHS six-week option: if your in-patient or day-patient treatment isn't available on the NHS within six weeks, you can have your treatment in a private hospital
• You can choose to add a policy excess – from £100 to £5,000 which you’d pay towards the cost of a claim. It applies once per person, each policy year
• Pick a reduced hospital list: such as hospitals in Scotland and Northern Ireland only, if that's where you live, or NHS Trust and Partnership private hospital units.

Consider diagnostics only cover

With diagnostics insurance, you can bypass the NHS and claim privately for all diagnostic tests and consultations that lead to an initial diagnosis of your symptoms. It doesn't cover any treatment resulting from your diagnosis, but you will pay less than standard health insurance.

Track your health

Tools that manage and record your health and fitness can go some way towards helping to reduce your premiums. Insurers will often offer rewards if you can show you're sticking to a healthy lifestyle, or are taking steps towards improving your health.

By registering for our online health and wellbeing tool, MyHealthCounts, you could save money when it's time to renew your policy. 

Take advantage of existing and new discounts

There are a few different ways to save on your Aviva health insurance.

• Existing customer discount ^{Footnote [3]}
  Get up to 10% ^{Footnote [4]} discount ^{Footnote [5]} off a new health insurance policy if you already have another Aviva product.
• My Healthy Discount ^{Footnote [6]}
  You could get up to 15% ^{Footnote [4]} discount ^{Footnote [5]} on your first year of premiums, if you meet our health-related criteria. Read full T&Cs.
• Renewal price guarantee ^{Footnote [6]}
  We guarantee your first renewal premium will stay the same, as long as you haven’t made a claim that’s reduced your no claim discount. T&Cs apply.

The best way to find out what health insurance will cost you is to get a quote. That way, you can make it suit your personal needs and circumstances. Try getting a quote for a few different levels of cover, to see how your premiums for each option stack up.