The ‘Man from the Pru’ no longer visits customers, he visits IFA’s and he’s just been to see me. Not today, you understand, it’s 7am as I type this – I saw him last week.

They have added ‘healthcare’ to the options on their ‘all in one’ insurance policy. My interest was mild, Healthcare is a pretty complex subject and there are many policies to choose from specialist providers and I wasn’t inclined to think he’d tell me anything that wouldn’t be revealed by running a search on my software.

But he surprised me.

They have the usual options – range of hospitals, range of cover etc and when I am looking at these options, I would put the Pru into competition with the usual providers and they would have to stand on their own two feet.

But they have an addition option that did tweak my interest.

It’s Private Health Insurance that just covers Cancer and Heart attacks. Now, the NHS are very good at Cancer and Heart attacks, from what I gather, but, good as they are, they have budgetry restraints – for instance Herseptin isn’t on the NHS, but is provided on this policy if appropriate – and the hospital experience is better when private, just by the very nature of things.

And this cover can be cheap – I was just running off quotes for a couple (him 40′s, her 30′s)  who wanted Life and Critical Illness Insurance. I added this Cancer and heart attack cover and the additional cost was £28. The cover is cheaper when run side by side with serious illness cover than if it’s stand alone because they cross subsidise the cover.

It seems to me that if you are interesting in Private Health cover, but have always found the premiums daunting, this is an ‘entry level’ product that is worth considering. Talk to your friendly neighbourhood IFA.