CS healthcare has revealed its ‘affordable healthcare' product, offering a level of coverage between relying on the NHS and a full Private Medical Insurance (PMI) product, called HealthBridge.
Policyholders will be covered up to a cost of £15,000 per policy year with co-payments of 15% capped at £250 per policy year.
The policy will exclude treatments for cancer once a diagnosis is made, diagnostics will be covered by HealthBridge.
Policyholders will be given hospital options under an open referral system, with a choice between three hospitals.
The policy has pricing varied by regions: London & the Channel Islands; South East; South West, Midlands and Wales; Northern England Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The policy has a moratorium underwriting, where conditions from the previous five years are not covered, until two years symptom free pass from the start of the policy.
Cover is available for investigations and detection, treatment and surgery, and recovery and support.
The investigations and dectection and recovery and support cover includes for heart and cancer conditions, patients with those conditions will use the NHS for treatment and surgery.
CS Healthcare provides policies for those in the Civil Service and public sector, with the policy available to those aged 18-64, policyholders may continue to have their policy after the age of 64.
A policy for a single 25 year old in London would cost £21.70, compared to £58.84 for comprehensive PMI with CS Healthcare.
For a couple living in Scotland aged 60 the monthly cost would be £96.54, compared to £328.16 for comprehensive PMI.
Mark Rothery, chief executive of CS Healthcare, said: "While there will always be those who prefer to purchase full-price PMI, indeed CS Healthcare will continue to supply such a product itself, we believe that it is becoming increasingly out of the reach of ordinary working families."
He added: "The health insurance market place needs to adapt to work with and alongside the NHS, to complement it rather than to replace what the NHS already does brilliantly.
Rothery said: "We are leading a charge here and feel that other providers, including the mainstream, will be forced to look at delivering such affordable solutions, and making these affordable solutions the main product in their portfolio, rather than full PMI."
He added: "We're committed to staying in the niche that we're in, it's a reasonable size, 5.4m, a pretty large proportion of the present working population, I think mutuals work best when they serve a purpose and serve a particular marketplace.
"It helps us design our products that they suit that particular marketplace, rather than some general purpose product."
Further Reading:
Adviser Clinic: AXA PPP: How do advisers feel about PMI at the moment?
Private Healthcare Summit 2015: Self pay growing at PMI's expense - report
