Many UK companies offer Private Health Insurance by providers such as BUPA, as a benefit to choose employment with them. This sounds all well and good when the employment offer comes through the post - scanning the list of benefits you are warmed by the compassion of your future employer that they want to look after you and your family.
You quickly sign up, happy in the knowledge that when Alzheimer's sets in you will be taken away by attractive nurses and cosseted in a luxurious hotelesque nursing home until the day you die. This opposed to a being carted away by men in white coats to a prison cell where no one ever visits and Doris on the next bed is dribbling her last words into the festering plate of lunch that has been there since the day before.
No contest you may think, but what are the real facts.
Yes you will have private health insurance, and you don't have to pay for it. However, and this is where I don't understand the system. By taking Private Health insurance you are reducing the burden on the National Health Service. Because you are saving the National Health Service money, the government takes a little bit more income tax from you and justify it by saying that you are receiving a perk from your Employer. It gets worse.
It is more than likely that during the course of your Employment you will not need to claim on your Private Health Insurance, and by the time you cant remember whether you had breakfast or not you will be retired and the Health Insurance will not be available. The result - you will be living next to Doris for the rest of your life, and you have paid through the nose for the privilege.
What would I do? Forget the Health Insurance, spend the additional money that you would have paid to the Government on enjoying your life while you will be able to remember the good times. At the end of the day Doris is waiting for you one way or another.
