Private Health Insurance
Private health insurance and complementary medicines

The position with regard to private health insurance and complementary or alternative medicine can be slightly complex at times.

To start with, different people can use the term ‘complementary medicine’ to mean many different things. In general use, it means treatments or therapies that are practiced typically outside of a conventional medical environment such as a hospital or GP’s surgery, and which use natural products and a holistic approach to the patient.

For many years these forms of treatments were viewed with some mistrust if not downright scepticism by the conventional medical establishment but over recent decades they have found increasing favour. In some countries such as France, these treatments are now widely available as options for patients as part of conventional medical treatment. In the UK, the position is perhaps slightly less developed but complementary medicine is now widely available.

In terms of private health insurance, the position will vary considerably depending upon the nature of your policy and the attitudes of the providers. Many policies will now allow treatment through complementary therapies though this may have to form part of an overall ‘medically supervised’ treatment regime and typically will be restricted to certain forms of treatment delivered by an approved and verified practitioner.

Some other policies may partly fund such therapies; some may fund or partly fund them through health club memberships and some may not support them at all.

In the final analysis you may need to check your policy carefully before purchasing it to be sure you understand the provider’s policy on such types of treatment. Most private health cover also has some form of ‘pre-authorisation’ process for approving treatments in advance. It is often mandatory to follow this procedure before obtaining consultation and treatment and this may be particularly important in the case of complementary medicines and related treatments.

It may also be worth keeping in mind that most private medical insurance will not provide cover for treatments for the following:

• critical or chronic illness (cover provided by the NHS);
• HIV/AIDS;
• normal pregnancy;
• pre-existing conditions;
• normal pregnancy;
• self-inflicted illness of injury.

So if your private health insurance policy does not provide conventional medical treatment in such cases, it may therefore be unlikely that it would approve complementary medicine for them either.