Average Cost of Family Health Insurance In The UK

A word of caution

Before we get into this article, we must point out that the averages we have provided are based on several assumptions. The cost of your family’s policy will be different. The best and quickest way to find out what it would cost for your family is to request a comparison quote.

How much does health insurance cost for individuals?

If you are interested in knowing the average cost of health insurance for individuals, read this recently completed guide where we obtained over 700 quotes from the leading health insurance companies.

What affects the cost of family health insurance?

Private medical insurance is one of the more complicated types of cover you can take out in the UK. Most plans are incredibly configurable, and we as individuals are very different from each other. Add into the mix more people, i.e. a family of 3, 4, 5 or more. You’ve got an enormous number of variables that will affect the cost of your policy.

All of the following factors will affect the cost of your family’s private health insurance:

• The number of people on the policy
• The age of the family members
• Where you live in the UK
• The medical history of the family
• Whether the parents are smokers
• The current cost of private medical treatments and private medical care
• The hospital list selected
• The excess on the policy
• How the policy is underwritten (moratorium or full medical underwriting)
• The level of cover chosen (inpatient, some outpatient, full outpatient)
• Any optional extras (physiotherapy, dental cover, travel cover)

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Physiotherapy and other therapies

Many people that speak to us and take out health insurance policies are keen to have physiotherapy and, in some cases, other complementary therapies included in their policies. While some health insurers will cover these as standard, not all will. So if you lead an active lifestyle and having the ability to see a physiotherapist in the event of injury is essential to you, be sure to check that it’s included. As with all options and parts of your health insurance, talking with a broker will help to ensure you have the cover you need.

Family Health Insurance Cost (UK)

To give you a rough estimate of the cost of family health insurance, we will need to do several things. Firstly, we’ll break things down by family size – providing health insurance pricing for families of 3, 4 and 5 people. 

A comprehensive policy including £500 outpatient cover

With many factors affecting the cost of private health insurance policies, we need to make some decisions on behalf of the hypothetical families to make meaningful comparisons. To minimise the impact of where you live on the prices, we’ll request quotes based on ten locations around the UK and then average the results. The quotes will all be based on moratorium underwriting, effectively excluding any conditions you’ve suffered from in the past five years.

“Did you know that with moratorium underwriting, if you don’t suffer any symptoms relating to an excluded pre-existing condition for two years after taking out a policy, it will become covered under your policy?”

Other private medical insurance variables

We need to be consistent with all of our private healthcare quotes so that they will be based on the following:

• The figures we provide will be based on an average of quotes received for the families living in the following cities; Southampton, London, Cambridge, Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff, and Edinburgh.
• We will get pricing from the five leading providers, Bupa, Axa PPP, Vitality, Aviva, and WPA.
• We will always choose the lowest price from these leading providers.
• The policies will be underwritten on a moratorium basis, meaning we won’t need to disclose the applicants’ medical history.
• The excess on the policy will be set at £200 or as close to that as possible.
• The policy will include £500 of outpatient cover per insured person.
• No additional options, such as dental or optical cover, will be added.
• The quotes were obtained directly from the providers on 1st September 2022.
• The children on the policy are younger than 15 years of age.
• We will provide pricing based on both parents being 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 years old.
• The policy we opt for will be comprehensive and provide inpatient, outpatient and outpatient cover. (please note, what is and isn’t included will differ from provider to provider).

As you can see, the cost of health insurance for a family of three rises substantially based on the adults’ ages. As we’ll show in the following sections, adding children more children to a policy doesn’t have such an impact.

Disclaimer: While every care has been taken to make these averages representative, the private health insurance prices provided are purely examples; the cost of your policy will be different. Please request a comparison quote to find out what a policy would cost for your family.

Disclaimer: While every care has been taken to make these averages representative, the private health insurance prices provided are purely examples; the cost of your policy will be different. Please request a comparison quote to find out what a policy would cost for your family.

Disclaimer: While every care has been taken to make these averages representative, the private health insurance prices provided are purely examples; the cost of your policy will be different. Please request a comparison quote to find out what a policy would cost for your family.