Three different questions share the words "health insurance companies prices", and this page takes the one most people mean: what the insurers would charge you for private medical cover. No clause we hold from any insurer is a price, and we hold no premium data for any firm, so no figure on this page sits beside a company's name. What the companies do publish, each in its own wording, is the shape of their price, and that is what this page sets side by side.
The decision underneath the search is which insurers to ask for a quote, and on what settings. An FCA-authorised broker can put one set of answers to several insurers and bring the quotes back priced on your age, address, medical history and choices. One sits at the other end of the form on this page, which is free to send and quick to fill in. The broker's panel is not the whole market, and you can also ask an insurer yourself. If you meant what a company pays to cover its staff, or how much the insurers earn, both are dealt with further down.
Why no company's price can be printed
A premium is not a list price. Every insurer prices it on the person buying: age first, then where they live, then the underwriting route that decides what their medical history excludes, and only then the settings chosen on the quote. Two people of different ages asking the same company on the same day for the same cover get two figures, so "Bupa costs this" would be false before the sentence ended.
What is written down is the document behind the quote. Five insurers' documents sit behind this page, from Aviva, Bupa, Freedom Health Insurance, Vitality and WPA, each named with its issue date in the tables below. Four were read on 4 September 2026. The Vitality copy is a broker-hosted one rather than Vitality's own, read on 10 October 2026, and every Vitality clause here is its August 2024 wording and nothing more current. The Aviva copy is also an intermediary's, and Aviva's own site has since published a March 2026 issue that none of this has been checked against.
None of what we hold from the five is a price. What each describes is the settings a price is built on: how much of a bill the member carries first, how often that is counted, where the out-patient line sits, and what choosing a lower one takes away. Those are the companies' price levers, and the comparison this page can honestly make.
Where the UK market sits before a company's name is attached
There is a figure to give, as long as it is the market's. Indicatively, for the market rather than any one company and not as a quote, a single adult in their forties buying mid-range cover might expect something like £40 to £80 a month, or £480 to £960 across a year, and a family of four on one policy, the parents in their thirties or forties, something like £100 to £200 a month. Both are deliberately wide, neither is attached to any insurer, and the indicative ranges by age and household carry the other readers. The figure that is yours is a quote on your own details, from a broker or an insurer.
The spread inside each range is largely the levers below, a figure near the bottom usually being a policy with a high excess, a reduced out-patient line and a short hospital list. And the ranges describe the market, not the gap between companies: ask several insurers for the same policy and the answers may well all sit inside one range while differing from each other, in an order nothing we hold can give.
So when you ask for a quote, ask for it twice: at two excess levels, or with and without a reduced out-patient line. The gap between the pair is that lever's price in your own numbers rather than the market's. A broker with several insurers' quote systems open can run the pair in one go; the form on this page sends that request to one who is FCA-authorised, the quote is free, and it takes minutes rather than days.
The price levers, company by company
Two levers run through the five documents: the excess and the out-patient line. The Aviva, Bupa, Freedom and WPA clauses are quoted in full on other pages, chiefly the page on choosing an excess level and the page on benefit limits, so here they are summarised, with each row saying where the wording is. Vitality's wording is quoted because no other page on this site yet sets it beside the others, and on the first lever it is the only one of the five extracts that counts an excess per claim.
Lever one: the excess, and how often each company counts it
| Company | What its wording offers | How the excess is counted | Where the clause is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aviva | Six excess options, £100 to £5,000 | Per member, every policy year; treatment that runs into the next policy year meets a second excess | Healthier Solutions terms (April 2025 issue), pages 11 and 12; in full on the excess page and the yearly-cost page |
| Bupa | A worked example: a £100 excess on a £250 physiotherapy bill, paid by the member to the physiotherapist | Once a policy year; other treatment that year brings no second excess, and a Direct Access phone or video assessment carries none at all | Bupa By You policy guide (BINS 14718, 2024), pages 7 and 10; in full on the excess page |
| Freedom Health Insurance | An amount deducted from the first valid invoice and later ones until fully applied, then paid by the member to the provider | The clause names no period | Freedom Elite Policyholder's Guide to Cover (April 2025), page 31; in full on the excess page |
| Vitality | Worked examples with a £250 excess and a £100 excess, each paid by the member to the provider or consultant | Two ways in one guide: one member has paid all of his excess for treatment in that plan year, another's is applied per claim and falls due again for a new condition | Membership Guide (August 2024), pages 13, 25, 50 and 51; quoted below |
| WPA | A chosen excess level, or Shared Responsibility: 25% of eligible claims up to a chosen ceiling | The excess per policy year; the period of the co-payment ceiling is not stated | Complete Health IPID (November 2025), page 2; in full on what WPA costs |
Read down the third column rather than the second: the levels are what a quote shows, the counting is what the companies do differently. Aviva's terms, Bupa's example and WPA's summary all count by the policy year. Vitality's guide runs its examples both ways, and the per-claim version is worth seeing as written:
"As this is a new condition, and the excess she chose to include is applied per claim, we pay £200 and advise Jennifer to pay £100, her excess, to the osteopath"
— Vitality, Membership Guide (Your Personal Healthcare plan terms and conditions), August 2024, page 51, read 10 October 2026 from a broker-hosted copy, as above.
Earlier in the same example Jennifer has paid that £100 excess once already, to a consultant, with Vitality paying £400 because she "has full Out-patient Cover" (same guide, page 51); the osteopath is a new condition, so it falls due again. The guide's other member is on the other footing: Elliot's first claim of the plan year costs him his £250 excess, paid to the provider direct while Vitality pays £50 (page 50), and a later claim is met in full "as he has already paid all of his excess for treatment occurring in that plan year" (same page). The per-claim kind is deducted "from the first invoice we pay (and the next invoice if any excess still remains)" (page 25). Which basis a given plan carries is not settled by our extract; the guide calls it the excess "she chose to include", which reads as a setting, so ask which one a Vitality quote is built on.
Two of the five documents put a percentage on the page. WPA's Shared Responsibility is offered alongside the excess as a second way of sharing the cost, and it runs across eligible claims generally: a quarter of each until a chosen ceiling is reached, over a period the summary does not state. Vitality's is narrower. For one treatment the guide describes, "You will not have to pay your plan excess in respect of this treatment, however, you will need to pay 25% of the costs of the treatment" (page 13). Our extract does not say which treatment, so it is a clause to ask Vitality about.
Nothing we hold from the five says what any of this does to the premium. The general shape of the market is that the higher the excess chosen, the lower the premium tends to be, and that is the direction only: how much a step saves at any named insurer is written down nowhere we hold. So ask each company for the level and the basis, in writing. The same level on two quotes can mean one payment a year at one company and one per claim at the other, and the second can cost a second excess in a year with two conditions, which the premium alone will not show.
Lever two: the out-patient line, and what moving it changes
| Company | What the wording says about the out-patient line | What choosing it changes | Where the clause is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aviva | A reduced out-patient limit option of £500 or £1,000, pooled across a set of out-patient benefits the clause does not list, for each member every policy year; or a £0 option | The £500 or £1,000 option takes complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and hospital surgery on the teeth, out of the policy as an in-patient, day-patient or out-patient; the £0 option removes out-patient treatment, consultations and diagnostic tests included, except through some Aviva networks the clause does not name | Healthier Solutions terms (April 2025 issue), pages 7, 8 and 24; in full on the limits page and what a policy pays at a private hospital |
| Bupa | An "outpatient benefit allowance", where the policy has one, drawn down as bills come in | A Direct Access phone or video assessment is not subtracted from it; the allowance's amount is not in the clause | Bupa By You policy guide (BINS 14718, 2024), page 7; in full on the limits page |
| Vitality | Consultant appointments after a GP referral covered up to the limit shown on the membership certificate; one example's Out-patient Cover is limited to £500 per plan year, another member has full Out-patient Cover | The line is a certificate entry rather than a single fixed cap, so two Vitality members can hold different ones; what else draws on it is not in the clauses we hold | Membership Guide (August 2024), pages 16 and 51; quoted below |
| WPA | Consultations with a specialist capped at £250 as standard | Raised by buying the Extra Out-patient Consultations optional extra; the cap is on a named thing, so whether a scan or a blood test counts against it is for the full policy guide to say | Complete Health IPID (November 2025), page 1; in full on the limits page |
| Freedom Health Insurance | No out-patient clause sits in this page's evidence | Not established here; the Freedom out-patient wording the site does hold is on the limits page | — |
The second column shows three different things an "out-patient limit" can be, and a quote shows only one of them. At WPA it is a standard cap on a named benefit, with an extra sold to lift it. At Aviva it is an option chosen on the quote, and choosing it changes the cover itself, in-patient as much as out-patient. At Vitality it is whatever the certificate says:
"Out-patient Cover You are covered up to the limit shown on your membership certificate for appointments with a consultant, following a referral from a GP"
— Vitality, Membership Guide (Your Personal Healthcare plan terms and conditions), August 2024, page 16, read 10 October 2026.
A certificate figure was set when the plan was bought, which is why the guide's examples can put one member on Out-patient Cover "limited to £500 per plan year" and another on full Out-patient Cover (page 51). The £500 is an example's figure, not Vitality's price or its only level. The guide's third example, titled "how excesses and benefit limits interact", is built on "a £250 excess, applied per claim" (same page): the two levers stack, and a quote that has moved both is a differently shaped policy, not the same one at a better price.
A lower out-patient line generally brings a premium down. On the Aviva wording it also removes two kinds of treatment, so a quote that is cheaper for that reason is cheaper because it covers less. If a company's figure comes in low, ask what its out-patient line is, what draws on it, and whether choosing it took anything out. A broker can ask several insurers that at once and send the answers back with the quotes, and the form on this page sets that in motion.
How to read the companies' quotes against each other
"Best price" is what people search for, and between companies it only means something once the quotes describe the same policy. Before you read the figures, make them match on five things.
- The excess, level and basis. The same level on each, and the same answer to whether it is counted per policy year or per claim; on the clauses above that answer differs between companies.
- The out-patient line, and what it is. The same figure, the same answer to what draws on it, and the same answer to whether choosing it removed any cover.
- The hospital list. A shorter list is a common reason one quote is lower than another; the page on how hospital lists work covers reading one.
- The underwriting route. A quote on a moratorium is not comparable with one on full medical underwriting, because the exclusions differ; the page on cover with a pre-existing condition goes through both.
- The extras on the certificate. Mental health, therapies, dental and optical cover are commonly options rather than core cover, and a quote without them tends to be lower for that reason alone.
Only then is the lower figure the cheaper company, and even then only for you: the same five companies priced for your neighbour can come out in a different order, which is why this site names no cheapest insurer and no best one. Those two questions have pages of their own, on the cheapest UK health insurance companies and which private health insurance is best.
If you meant what a company pays to insure its staff
The second reading of the search is a business buying cover for its people. As a broad indication only, not a quote and not any insurer's figure, a company scheme tends to run somewhere between £500 and £1,200 per employee per year, priced on the workforce rather than on one person, and the figure for your own staff list is a quote, which a broker can obtain from several insurers at once. We hold no group policy wording from any insurer, so the levers above are individual-policy clauses and may not be how a scheme is built; the pages on what company health insurance costs and what a group scheme costs were written for that buyer. One thing changes with the payer: an employer-paid policy is normally, as we understand the general position, a benefit in kind for the employee. That is an understanding and not tax advice; benefit in kind and the P11D has the detail.
Questions people ask about what the insurers charge
How much profit do health insurance companies make?
We have not looked at any insurer's accounts for this page, and no figure we hold describes one. Most of the searching behind this question seems to be about American insurers, whose shares are traded, and an insurer's profit or share price is not an input to the premium you would be quoted. There is a separate page on health insurance companies and profit.
Do health insurance companies get money from the government?
Not for private medical insurance in the UK: the NHS is funded through taxation, and a private policy is paid for by the person or employer who buys it. If anything the money runs the other way, since Insurance Premium Tax already sits inside the premium you are quoted, as we understand the general position. An understanding is not tax advice; the tax page has the detail.
Are health insurance companies raising their prices?
No clause we hold describes how any insurer sets a renewal price, so we cannot say what the market is doing in any year. Age is one input, so each renewal prices the policyholder a year older. The causes are on the page on why premiums go up, and the notice on the renewal page.
How much is too much to pay for health insurance?
No rule we could defend. Two tests do the work instead: whether the premium, the excess and anything above the out-patient line together are a sum you could carry in a bad year, and whether the cash price of the treatment you most want covered is one you could pay yourself if you had to. Private treatment and the NHS holds hospitals' published prices for common operations, labelled as cash prices and not premiums.
What does private surgery or a consultation cost, as against the insurance?
A different number: a hospital's or consultant's cash price for a patient paying themselves, which is what a policy exists to pay. Nothing on this page is one, and nothing in its evidence prices ACL surgery or any other operation. Private treatment and the NHS lists the operations whose published cash prices were captured, cataract surgery among them.
You came for the companies' prices, and the honest version is that the companies publish the levers and quote the number. Settle the levers first, then send the form on this page. It reaches an FCA-authorised broker, who can price the same settings at several insurers and come back with figures that are yours rather than the market's.