Hi folks,
Over the past few months I have been to various consultants for various things..not all KC but guess I am just falling apart!
Anyway,...I had never considered Private health care before but as a teacher I have found out that I can get a good discount...I got a quote for less than £30 a month, I am 25 with KC being the only diagonoised defect!
I was wondering if anyone here is a member a private health scheme and how they stand with their KC?
Cheers,
Dave.
Private Health Care..Bupa and alike.
Moderators: Anne Klepacz, John Smith, Sweet
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John Smith
- Moderator
- Posts: 1942
- Joined: Thu 08 Jan 2004 12:48 am
- Keratoconus: Yes, I have KC
- Vision: Graft(s) and spectacles
- Location: Sidcup, Kent
Hi Dave,
I'm reticent to name and shame here, but it's important information that needs to be "out there".
My company medical scheme used to be with BUPA. I found them excellent, and they had no problems on paying my consultant's bills for the regular visits and the graft itself.
We've now moved to Axa PPP, who are helpful enough, and to be fair they've not refused a bill yet (we've been with them for a year now), but their list of exclusions clearly states that chronic (never-ending) conditions are not covered, although specific related incidents such as a graft, or a rejection would be.
Always worth checking the small print before signing up!
I'm reticent to name and shame here, but it's important information that needs to be "out there".
My company medical scheme used to be with BUPA. I found them excellent, and they had no problems on paying my consultant's bills for the regular visits and the graft itself.
We've now moved to Axa PPP, who are helpful enough, and to be fair they've not refused a bill yet (we've been with them for a year now), but their list of exclusions clearly states that chronic (never-ending) conditions are not covered, although specific related incidents such as a graft, or a rejection would be.
Always worth checking the small print before signing up!
John
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jayuk
- Ambassador
- Posts: 2148
- Joined: Sun 21 Mar 2004 1:50 pm
- Location: London / Manchester / Cheshire
Oh boy PMI (Private Medical Insurance)
Lol..I had to post here as I have had alot of experience with them!!!
Like John, I can name a number of providers who you want to stear clear of.....but later
Ive had PMI since about a year before I was diagnosed.....when I was 18, and up until then I had absolutely no defect in me at all....lol
However, once I had KC and needed to be seen by a Consultant...I was knocked back..this was with WPA......and was around 9 years ago. The reason for the knock back was that they would not recognise KC and Contact Lenses as a medical problem......YES you read that right lol.....
Anyway, after that I moved to Standard Life and again there policy was a little complicated They would not cover lenses but would cover the cornea investigation......but eventually only covered Lamellar Graft........(thats a partial graft as opposed to the usual Full Penatrating keratoplasty)
Now thing to bear in mind here is that both the above polices I had were there "best" onces available with the bells and whilsles and costed me between £28 and £45 a month over the years.
Now, the most interesting bit.............when you deal with PMI companies they treat you different if you are a Personal client or a business attached client. Also, they wil not cover pre-existing conditions ranging from 2 to 5 years - normally 5 years.....so even if you have been seen for KC for a lens refit this will count!!! and the 5 year mark starts again...also be VERY carefull with the likes of WPA, Standard Life etc who offer Claims based membership cover. What this means is that if you claim once....the cost of your cover goes up...they did this with my sister who claimed ONCE and her monthly cost went from £31 to £45 with one claim.......
In the last few months I joined a large multi national company in a permanent capacity and was given Full BUPA cover..which covers ALL pre-existing conditions.....at the same time i also had my PMI with Standard Life.....surprise surprise SL did not cover my upcoming graft but BUPA covered it at a phone call!..No joke.......all i did was call them tell them who I wanted to be seen by and they gave me a authorisation number and that was it.......even for my graft thats around £4,200 its all paid for....
The difference is here i am part of a company that has many 1.000s of employees and thus the contract is worth millions to them...and therefore they will not argue with a 4,000 treaement....
So the moral of the story is..If you wor for a large enough company that has PMI beleive me its worth its weight in GOLD.......I kid you not.....
Oh BTW...before I recieved this cover, I was searching through the market for a decent provider...and after my research i found Legal And General Secure Health plan to be excellent for KC people......they covered the whole Graft, lenses etc for a Personal client assuming you didnt have KC prior to signing. If you did they gve you a 2 year period where you cannot be seen by anyone for the KC before they will cover you....
PS - I have no financial gain for the last paragraph and this is my own opinion and not of the Boards!!
Lol..I had to post here as I have had alot of experience with them!!!
Like John, I can name a number of providers who you want to stear clear of.....but later
Ive had PMI since about a year before I was diagnosed.....when I was 18, and up until then I had absolutely no defect in me at all....lol
However, once I had KC and needed to be seen by a Consultant...I was knocked back..this was with WPA......and was around 9 years ago. The reason for the knock back was that they would not recognise KC and Contact Lenses as a medical problem......YES you read that right lol.....
Anyway, after that I moved to Standard Life and again there policy was a little complicated They would not cover lenses but would cover the cornea investigation......but eventually only covered Lamellar Graft........(thats a partial graft as opposed to the usual Full Penatrating keratoplasty)
Now thing to bear in mind here is that both the above polices I had were there "best" onces available with the bells and whilsles and costed me between £28 and £45 a month over the years.
Now, the most interesting bit.............when you deal with PMI companies they treat you different if you are a Personal client or a business attached client. Also, they wil not cover pre-existing conditions ranging from 2 to 5 years - normally 5 years.....so even if you have been seen for KC for a lens refit this will count!!! and the 5 year mark starts again...also be VERY carefull with the likes of WPA, Standard Life etc who offer Claims based membership cover. What this means is that if you claim once....the cost of your cover goes up...they did this with my sister who claimed ONCE and her monthly cost went from £31 to £45 with one claim.......
In the last few months I joined a large multi national company in a permanent capacity and was given Full BUPA cover..which covers ALL pre-existing conditions.....at the same time i also had my PMI with Standard Life.....surprise surprise SL did not cover my upcoming graft but BUPA covered it at a phone call!..No joke.......all i did was call them tell them who I wanted to be seen by and they gave me a authorisation number and that was it.......even for my graft thats around £4,200 its all paid for....
The difference is here i am part of a company that has many 1.000s of employees and thus the contract is worth millions to them...and therefore they will not argue with a 4,000 treaement....
So the moral of the story is..If you wor for a large enough company that has PMI beleive me its worth its weight in GOLD.......I kid you not.....
Oh BTW...before I recieved this cover, I was searching through the market for a decent provider...and after my research i found Legal And General Secure Health plan to be excellent for KC people......they covered the whole Graft, lenses etc for a Personal client assuming you didnt have KC prior to signing. If you did they gve you a 2 year period where you cannot be seen by anyone for the KC before they will cover you....
PS - I have no financial gain for the last paragraph and this is my own opinion and not of the Boards!!
Last edited by jayuk on Thu 28 Apr 2005 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Paul Morgan
- Chatterbox
- Posts: 291
- Joined: Sat 06 Nov 2004 3:11 pm
- Keratoconus: Yes, I have KC
- Vision: Contact lenses
- Location: Yeovil, Somerset
I'm with *********, supplied by my lovely employers.
*******
...grrrrrrrr...enough said!
If you want to know the name you'd better PM me...don't fancy being sued!
But the basic premise is they don't know much about KC, and because they can't tick a box for it...they exclude it. If I was paying for it myself...well I wouldn't be paying.
*******
...grrrrrrrr...enough said!
If you want to know the name you'd better PM me...don't fancy being sued!
But the basic premise is they don't know much about KC, and because they can't tick a box for it...they exclude it. If I was paying for it myself...well I wouldn't be paying.
Hi guys, hope you don't mind my dropping in on this discussion. I think the most interesting aspect of this thread is its very premise, being that we should abandon our NHS clinics at all.
When I was diagnosed with KC in 1993, (at the age eighteen), there was a 2 year waiting list for a GP referral to my KC clinic in Hertfordshire! Needless to say I didn't take this lying down, and got down to Moorfields where I eventually managed to get a referral.
With 12 years as an NHS KC patient, and 7 years as an NHS employee, I can appreciate that clinics are often horrendously under resourced, and that the right to treatment can often fail to convert into actual delivery of care, thus tempting those who can afford it to go private. However, I can say with confidence that the standard of clinical excellence at Moorfields is extremely high. It seems that any problems I have experienced have more to do with the very low financial priority which is afforded to the NHS by central government, a government which I note is a member of the G8 and commits nearly 10% of our revenue to military spending whilst claiming to have no way of increasing the funding of the NHS. Here I also note the training of the doctors, nurses and other professionals that have so enhanced defective eyesight have been trained within the NHS and not the private health industry, so I therefore fail to see how any surgeon can carry out a corneal graft privately without having practised on hundreds of NHS patients first!
My point is this, if we consider ourselves to be members of a support group, we should perhaps consider how abandoning our health service in favour of the private sector can ever benefit KC sufferers.
regards,
Kristian
When I was diagnosed with KC in 1993, (at the age eighteen), there was a 2 year waiting list for a GP referral to my KC clinic in Hertfordshire! Needless to say I didn't take this lying down, and got down to Moorfields where I eventually managed to get a referral.
With 12 years as an NHS KC patient, and 7 years as an NHS employee, I can appreciate that clinics are often horrendously under resourced, and that the right to treatment can often fail to convert into actual delivery of care, thus tempting those who can afford it to go private. However, I can say with confidence that the standard of clinical excellence at Moorfields is extremely high. It seems that any problems I have experienced have more to do with the very low financial priority which is afforded to the NHS by central government, a government which I note is a member of the G8 and commits nearly 10% of our revenue to military spending whilst claiming to have no way of increasing the funding of the NHS. Here I also note the training of the doctors, nurses and other professionals that have so enhanced defective eyesight have been trained within the NHS and not the private health industry, so I therefore fail to see how any surgeon can carry out a corneal graft privately without having practised on hundreds of NHS patients first!
My point is this, if we consider ourselves to be members of a support group, we should perhaps consider how abandoning our health service in favour of the private sector can ever benefit KC sufferers.
regards,
Kristian
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jayuk
- Ambassador
- Posts: 2148
- Joined: Sun 21 Mar 2004 1:50 pm
- Location: London / Manchester / Cheshire
Kristian
Quite easily.....the NHS is a waste of money, poorly managed, and has a below average uptake of adequate competent frontline staff.....you get what you pay for in reality I am afraid......and that shows in the standards at any NHS hospital...i can give you countless examples of real experience of ill educated individuals who care very little for pateints and are more concerned with what tme there lunch is and if they can get home ealry than actually doing there jobs!
Now what I am not saying is that this applies to everyone.....it doesnt.....you gave Moorefields as an example......there are some excellent quality staff there and Im refering to a number of peopke at clinic 4 there....but you also get a number of incompetent staff making appointments and not knowing the urgency, or how to speak with patients.
The NHS as a whole should be scrapped and I feel a US style system should be introduced...have you any idea how much money WE pay for the NHS on a yearly basis? In Billions? Now compare that to a Private infrastructure...and you will realise that the cost effectivness of such a system far outweighs the burden we call the NHS has......eg in fiscal here we gave the NHS £92,700 million!!!! Have you any idea how much this is lol......now lets do a like for like comparison on cost v pateint care in the private sector.....
I understand that alot of this has to do with poor outdated management styles, inadequate management, pathetic targets, et al but that excuse has always been around but nothing happens....
Another example.....personal one......I currently have an urgent need for a graft and was seen at moorfields.....I also wasnt able to put a lens in the lesses KC eye as the condition was increasing......therefore essentially I was blind and I couldnt do anything.........couldnt work, etc...I explained this to a pathetic excuse of a human being and was then told that I would recieve an appt in 6 months for a graft consultation........if thats patient care than we can do away with that right now......You get what you pay for....and KC is something that affects people differently....but when your whle life appears to be escaping you...and you than have to rely on an inadequate system..people need to ask questions......its like for like on Cancer treatment......people still have to wait upto 3 months fo Chemo!?...have you any idea the risk there for the patient.......
However, you are correct with regards to specialist having peformed grafts on NHS..as thats were they get there experience from if they are in the UK..bt what about if they arein the USA?......
Dont take this personally......lol....just feel the UK needs to start thining of scrapping the NHS as a whole as the financial burden is too much...and the more money we plough into it the more it gets bad......
Quite easily.....the NHS is a waste of money, poorly managed, and has a below average uptake of adequate competent frontline staff.....you get what you pay for in reality I am afraid......and that shows in the standards at any NHS hospital...i can give you countless examples of real experience of ill educated individuals who care very little for pateints and are more concerned with what tme there lunch is and if they can get home ealry than actually doing there jobs!
Now what I am not saying is that this applies to everyone.....it doesnt.....you gave Moorefields as an example......there are some excellent quality staff there and Im refering to a number of peopke at clinic 4 there....but you also get a number of incompetent staff making appointments and not knowing the urgency, or how to speak with patients.
The NHS as a whole should be scrapped and I feel a US style system should be introduced...have you any idea how much money WE pay for the NHS on a yearly basis? In Billions? Now compare that to a Private infrastructure...and you will realise that the cost effectivness of such a system far outweighs the burden we call the NHS has......eg in fiscal here we gave the NHS £92,700 million!!!! Have you any idea how much this is lol......now lets do a like for like comparison on cost v pateint care in the private sector.....
I understand that alot of this has to do with poor outdated management styles, inadequate management, pathetic targets, et al but that excuse has always been around but nothing happens....
Another example.....personal one......I currently have an urgent need for a graft and was seen at moorfields.....I also wasnt able to put a lens in the lesses KC eye as the condition was increasing......therefore essentially I was blind and I couldnt do anything.........couldnt work, etc...I explained this to a pathetic excuse of a human being and was then told that I would recieve an appt in 6 months for a graft consultation........if thats patient care than we can do away with that right now......You get what you pay for....and KC is something that affects people differently....but when your whle life appears to be escaping you...and you than have to rely on an inadequate system..people need to ask questions......its like for like on Cancer treatment......people still have to wait upto 3 months fo Chemo!?...have you any idea the risk there for the patient.......
However, you are correct with regards to specialist having peformed grafts on NHS..as thats were they get there experience from if they are in the UK..bt what about if they arein the USA?......
Dont take this personally......lol....just feel the UK needs to start thining of scrapping the NHS as a whole as the financial burden is too much...and the more money we plough into it the more it gets bad......
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Janet Manning
- Regular contributor
- Posts: 98
- Joined: Thu 25 Mar 2004 9:44 am
- Location: Abingdon,Oxfordshire
After reading the last post I feel I must put in an example of the other side of the story. A year ago today I went for a regular check-up at Oxford eye hospital. One eye had been painful for a week and I'd reduced my lens wearing time. My appointment was 5.40 p.m. the day before a long weekend, when I'm sure everyone was eager to get home. I was seen at 5.45 and the corneal abrasion discovered by a junior doctor. He went off and consulted the 'boss' - time consuming for them both - and a course of action was agreed. I was then asked to return the following Wed. at 8.30 a.m. as there were no appointment slots, but the consultant wanted to check my progress.
I felt that great care and attention was given, nothing rushed, even late on Friday afternoon. I was also offered a follow up appointment 5 days later when there were actually no spaces available. Again I was not rushed through at this appointment and felt I received excellent care - all on the NHS.
When I had my grafts there were private patients sitting with the NHS ones. They used the same chairs, operating theatre, surgeon, nurses etc. Only difference was that the surgeon came out to speak to them in person before they went in, whereas the rest of us got the junior doctor. They WALKED out after their cataract ops, whereas I got a wheelchair!!!!
Whilst trying to improve services in the NHS, let's not forget the examples of excellence that do exist. It must be SO demoralising for staff who are trying hard to deliver a good service, when all they get is a constant bashing.
I do however sympathise with your long wait for a graft consultation. It must be hugely frustrating both for you and your employer. It's like having to put your life on hold.
Janet
I felt that great care and attention was given, nothing rushed, even late on Friday afternoon. I was also offered a follow up appointment 5 days later when there were actually no spaces available. Again I was not rushed through at this appointment and felt I received excellent care - all on the NHS.
When I had my grafts there were private patients sitting with the NHS ones. They used the same chairs, operating theatre, surgeon, nurses etc. Only difference was that the surgeon came out to speak to them in person before they went in, whereas the rest of us got the junior doctor. They WALKED out after their cataract ops, whereas I got a wheelchair!!!!
Whilst trying to improve services in the NHS, let's not forget the examples of excellence that do exist. It must be SO demoralising for staff who are trying hard to deliver a good service, when all they get is a constant bashing.
I do however sympathise with your long wait for a graft consultation. It must be hugely frustrating both for you and your employer. It's like having to put your life on hold.
Janet
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jayuk
- Ambassador
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- Joined: Sun 21 Mar 2004 1:50 pm
- Location: London / Manchester / Cheshire
Janet
Dont get me wrong, I wasnt saying its all doom and gloom....I was reffering to the bigger picture of the NHS......whilst we may get the Junior Doctors and even Seniors offer good service, they will not make a difference on the whole as the control of the NHS is beyod them.I was just talking about the way its run and the burden on the UK economy due to mismanagement, and poor control procedures..which is why Private Medical Care will always be superior as everything is geared towars patients as they are the revenue generator
Dont get me wrong, I wasnt saying its all doom and gloom....I was reffering to the bigger picture of the NHS......whilst we may get the Junior Doctors and even Seniors offer good service, they will not make a difference on the whole as the control of the NHS is beyod them.I was just talking about the way its run and the burden on the UK economy due to mismanagement, and poor control procedures..which is why Private Medical Care will always be superior as everything is geared towars patients as they are the revenue generator
well..I will defo check the small print to see what I am and am not covered for before signing!
I sometimes think the piece of mind is worth £30 of anyones money...I can go a weekend with not going out and then my health is 'better' covered....small price to pay.
I am waiting for an appointment to see a Neuroligist and I was reffered nearly 3 weeksd ago and still dont have an appointment...if what the guy said on the phone is correct I would have seen someone within 5 days of the refferal!
how does it all work? Does the gp just write to a different place instead of the local hospital..or do you have to provide a consultants name for them to write to?
Thanks for all the replies...no interest in any moral or ethical issues this moment in time..I just want piece of mind!
Cheers all,
Dave.
I sometimes think the piece of mind is worth £30 of anyones money...I can go a weekend with not going out and then my health is 'better' covered....small price to pay.
I am waiting for an appointment to see a Neuroligist and I was reffered nearly 3 weeksd ago and still dont have an appointment...if what the guy said on the phone is correct I would have seen someone within 5 days of the refferal!
how does it all work? Does the gp just write to a different place instead of the local hospital..or do you have to provide a consultants name for them to write to?
Thanks for all the replies...no interest in any moral or ethical issues this moment in time..I just want piece of mind!
Cheers all,
Dave.
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