Private health insurance for the self-employed — what it costs

Working for yourself changes the price question before you have asked it. There is no employer above you paying most of the premium, so the whole of it is yours, every month, drawn from income that does not arrive in twelve equal pieces. What you are deciding is how much fixed cost the business can carry and how much of the risk of treatment you keep for yourself. Both halves of that can be priced for your own circumstances by an FCA-authorised broker, for nothing: the form on this page passes the question to one.

This page works in the opposite order from a general cost page. It opens with a broad indicative range, then takes the four things that decide where in it you land — your age, the excess you pick, how much out-patient cover you keep, and whether the policy is bought by you or by a company you own — and says what each one means for somebody with no sick pay behind them. Wording that another page here prints in full is summarised and linked, not repeated.

What self-employed health insurance costs, as a range

No figure on this site sits beside an insurer's name, because we hold no premium data for any firm and will not invent it. What we can give you is a broad indicative range from general knowledge of the UK market, deliberately wide: the gap between two people of the same age, in different postcodes, with different medical histories, is big enough that a single number would be wrong for almost everybody. As an indication rather than a quote, then, mid-range individual cover with out-patient benefit and a moderate excess, paid monthly, sits roughly here.

Those are indicative market territory and nothing more. No insurer has offered you a price, and nothing here suggests you would pay the bottom of a range. What the table does show honestly is the direction of travel: age moves a premium more than any choice you make about the policy, which is why a quote taken today tells you fairly little about what the same cover will cost you after fifteen years of trading. Want to know which end of the range your own age and health put you at? That takes a quote, and sending the form on this page lets one broker put your details to several insurers at once, free of charge.

Two things about those numbers matter especially if you work for yourself. The first is that a monthly figure flatters the commitment: a premium is an annual cost collected in instalments, so the number that belongs in your forecast is twelve of those payments, every year the policy runs. The second, and the reason the rest of this page exists, is that the range covers the premium alone. The premium is the predictable column. The excess, any co-payment and anything the cover stops paying for are the unpredictable column, and they land in the year you claim — which, for somebody who bills for their own time, is often the year the income dips.

Nobody is splitting the premium with you

Where cover comes through an employer, the employer contracts with the insurer and pays it, and whatever the member contributes is handled through the payroll. Buying alone, you are the policyholder, the payer and, unless you add someone, the only member. Two consequences follow, and neither is about the headline price.

The premium is a fixed cost in a business whose income is not fixed. It does not fall in a quiet quarter, it does not pause between contracts, and it falls due in a month with no invoices exactly as it does in a busy one. So the affordability test that counts is not whether the figure looks reasonable against a good month, but whether it is still comfortable against your worst one. If the trade is seasonal, cost the cover from the low season.

It also rises with age and is repriced at renewal rather than fixed for as long as you hold it; why the figure can move even in a year you did not claim is set out on the page about private health insurance renewal prices. Treat a first-year premium as an opening figure in a long commitment. One thing to settle before comparing two of them: a policy bought alone is underwritten on you as an individual, and two premiums written on different underwriting routes are not comparable prices. The wordings we hold on those routes are quoted on the page about cover with a pre-existing condition.

The excess is a cash-flow decision, not a price lever

Raising the excess lowers the premium. That is the dial everybody reaches for first, and on an irregular income it deserves the hardest thought, because what it really does is move money out of the column you can plan for and into the column you cannot.

Aviva's Healthier Solutions terms and conditions set out six excess levels, the smallest £100 and the largest £5,000, with the excess payable by each member for every policy year (April 2025 issue, page 11, read 4 September 2026). A later issue has since been published which we have not re-checked, so read these as the wording we read, not as today's offer. Those levels compared side by side are the subject of the page on what a health insurance excess is.

Per policy year is the part people misread. Bupa's guide for Bupa By You follows a member whose physiotherapy costs £250: the insurer pays £150, the member hands £100 to the physiotherapist as the policy excess, and nothing further is due on other treatment in the same policy year (BINS 14718, 2024, page 10, read 4 September 2026). The excess is an annual deductible, in other words, not a charge per appointment — a year of several claims costs the same excess as a year of one.

Where the money goes is the detail that bites in a thin month. Freedom's Elite guide describes deducting the excess from the first valid invoice it receives, and from later ones until the amount is used up, after which the member settles that amount with the provider direct (Freedom Health Insurance, Freedom Elite Policyholder's Guide to Cover, April 2025, page 31, read 4 September 2026). That is cash leaving your account towards a clinic's bill, not a credit note. Choose a level you could produce in a week when you are not working.

A large excess does more than reduce the insurer's share of a large claim. One of Aviva's worked examples puts £1,000 of treatment against an excess of the same size, and the member meets the whole cost (page 12). Small claims are the ones most people actually have, so a high excess quietly removes cover for them while the monthly saving is still being counted. A second example in that section shows what a policy year boundary does: treatment carrying on into the next year attracts another excess, and in the example the member pays the first £5,000 all over again. That £5,000 is the example's own excess, not a general figure, but the mechanism matters: treatment straddling your renewal date can cost two excesses instead of one.

WPA offers a second shape of cost-sharing alongside the ordinary excess. Under Shared Responsibility the member pays a quarter of each eligible claim until their contributions reach a ceiling they chose (Complete Health Insurance Product Information Document, November 2025, page 2, read 4 September 2026). A share that grows with the bill is harder to keep in reserve than a flat sum, and on a variable income it cuts both ways: less to find on a small claim, an open-ended commitment on a big one until the ceiling arrives. Nothing else we have read offers that structure, which tells you about our reading rather than about the market. Level-by-level comparison lives on the page on how much excess to choose; what belongs here is the test. Ask for the same cover at two or three excess levels, set each monthly saving beside the cash it puts at risk, and if the saving is small while the excess is large, you have sold your own cover cheaply.

The cheap structures cut the part that gets you back to work

Out-patient is where diagnosis happens: the consultation, the scan, the tests that follow a referral. For somebody on a payroll, a slow diagnosis is mostly discomfort. For somebody invoicing their own time, the weeks before anyone knows what is wrong are the expensive part. Which is why the cheapest structures need reading closely here: what they generally cut is out-patient.

WPA's product information document covers out-patient consultations with a specialist to £250 a policy year as standard, lifted by buying the Extra Out-patient Consultations optional extra (November 2025, page 1, read 4 September 2026). A £250 allowance does not stretch across many specialist appointments, and raising it means paying for an add-on rather than finding it in the base cover. Aviva instead groups a set of out-patient benefits under one combined limit, either £500 or £1,000 a member a policy year (Healthier Solutions terms, April 2025 issue, page 7). Which benefits sit inside that group the clause we hold does not say, so ask the insurer rather than assume.

Taking a reduced limit can also withdraw cover somewhere you were not looking: at either of those reduced out-patient limits, Aviva's terms exclude treatment for complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and for dental surgery carried out in hospital, as an in-patient, day-patient or out-patient alike (page 8). The bottom of that ladder is a structure with no out-patient cover at all, and here the wording is worth seeing rather than paraphrasing:

"If you have chosen option reduced out-patient cover – £0 limit we do not cover treatment as an out-patient, including consultations and diagnostic tests"

— Aviva, Healthier Solutions terms and conditions (April 2025 issue), page 24, read 4 September 2026.

Read as a self-employed buyer, that is the cheapest version of the policy removing the consultation and the diagnostic test — the two things that would have shortened the time you were not earning. The same terms carve out an exception for out-patient treatment taken through some of the insurer's own networks, and the clause does not name them (page 8), so if a structure like that is quoted to you, ask which route to a consultation stays open and get the answer in writing. How different insurers word their caps is compared on the page on benefit limits.

One clause we hold runs the other way, and it is worth knowing about for a working day you would otherwise lose. Bupa's guide says a phone or video assessment through its Direct Access route costs the member no excess and is not taken off the out-patient allowance, where either of those applies to the policy (BINS 14718, 2024, page 7, read 4 September 2026). That is Bupa's wording; what others do with remote assessments we have not checked. The request that turns all of this into money is narrow enough to make by email: the same cover priced with the out-patient limit kept and again with it reduced, each at two excess levels. Ask a broker through the form on this page and those four figures can come back together, for nothing.

Whose name is on the policy, and which account pays for it

Two questions hide inside one here. Who the policyholder is — you personally, or a company you own — and which account the money leaves each month. Only the first of those changes the application.

Readers working for themselves overwhelmingly want to know one thing about the second: whether the premium is a deductible business expense. This page will not tell you, and that is a refusal rather than an oversight. As we understand the general position, a policy you buy from your own taxed income attracts no relief, and where a company pays for an individual’s cover a benefit in kind comes into it. That is our understanding rather than tax advice: we hold no HMRC guidance, so there is no rate and no threshold here, and the arrangement that fits your business is for an accountant to settle. What can be said honestly is that the answer turns on how the business is structured and on who the policy actually covers; that where a company pays for an individual's cover, a benefit in kind may come into it; and that the person who can settle it against your own figures is your accountant. The territory, as far as this site has established it, is on the page about private health insurance and tax, and employer schemes are costed on the page on company health insurance.

What you can usefully take into that conversation is specific: who you intend the policyholder to be, who the members are, what the annual premium comes to, and which account you would want it paid from. Deciding it early is simpler than changing it later. None of it moves the premium — that is set on the people covered and the cover chosen — but it decides who writes the cheque, and that is a different conversation with a different professional.

What the premium does not buy: the weeks you cannot invoice

A medical policy pays for treatment. It settles with the hospital and the specialist, for conditions that can be treated and resolved, and whether you are earning while that happens forms no part of it. An employee has whatever sick pay their contract provides sitting behind them; working for yourself, nothing does, and that gap is why the two products are so often confused by people searching for the price of one of them.

The policy that replaces income while illness or injury keeps you from working is a separate product, underwritten differently and priced differently, and the difference between the two is drawn out on the page for contractors buying cover. The reason it belongs on a page about price is budgeting. If what you are really costing out is what happens to you after three months of illness, a medical premium answers one half of that question, and the other half carries a price of its own.

What people working for themselves ask about the price

How much is health insurance if you are self-employed?

There is no self-employed price list, and no insurer publishes a rate for the category. As an indication rather than a quote, a single adult in their thirties buying mid-range individual cover is in the region of £30 to £60 a month, rising with each decade of age. What working for yourself changes is not a special rate but who pays the whole of it, and what you have behind you if you cannot work.

Is private health insurance a deductible business expense?

It depends on how your business is structured and on who the policy covers. As we understand the general position, a company buying cover for a director sits in different territory from a sole trader paying out of taxed income, and where a company pays for an individual's cover a benefit in kind comes into it; private health insurance and tax sets out the shape of that. It is our understanding rather than advice, there is no rate or threshold on either page, and your accountant can settle it against your own figures.

Can my business pay for the policy rather than me?

Who holds the policy and who pays for it are separate things, and the first is a question for the insurer or the broker: ask outright whether the policy can be written with a company as policyholder. Which insurers will do that for a one-person business is not something we have checked, so get the answer before the application rather than after it.

What excess should I choose if my income is irregular?

We do not recommend a level, and nobody should from a web page. One useful test is whether you could hand the full excess to a clinic in your worst trading month, since a claim and a quiet month have a habit of arriving together.

Does private health insurance pay me if illness stops me working?

No. It pays for treatment and settles with the providers rather than with you, and that holds however high the premium is. The product that pays you an income while you cannot work is a separate policy with its own underwriting and its own price.

Is there a self-employed discount?

Nothing we hold shows an insurer running one, and an absence of evidence on our side is not evidence that none exists. What could and could not be established on the subject is set out on the page on WPA and the self-employed.

Can I reduce or cancel the cover if work dries up?

No clause we hold covers mid-term changes or cancellation, so settle it before you buy rather than assuming. Three questions do the job: what can be changed during the policy year, what can only change at renewal, and whether moving to a cheaper structure affects how your medical history is treated.

A range got you this far; a figure gets you a decision. One pass through the form on this page will do it — an authorised broker can then price the cover on your age, your health and the excess your business could absorb, and quote it more than one way so each choice shows what it costs.