Has anyone had any dealings with Pru Health private medical insurers?

I had a policy with BUPA for absolutely years which became very expensive. I decided to look into other policies and came up with Pru Health eventually. A rather pushy salesman visited the house just before I was going away on holiday so I felt rushed into a decision as my insurance was up for renewal. He kept phoning me and leaving messages and in the end I signed up.

I visited my doctor with back pain last week and he referred me to a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon. I rang Pru Health for a sanction and was surprised to find that their procedures are very different from BUPA as they wanted a form completed by my Doctor. They have now phoned me to say that they need a copy of all my medical notes for the last 5 years or they cannot sanction my treatment. They are calling into question my Doctors honesty and mine and I consider that is an invasion of my privacy. I cannot now go back to BUPA as they will not cover me with an existing condition and I am totally fed up with these cowboys!

Any feedback would be more than welcome.

Just to inform anyone who is interested that the treatment was sanctioned after my doctors report was complted. I'm and all done and dusted now but after my poor treatment I returned to BUPA!!

Breezy Girl

I've been with Pru Health Platinum level for 2 years and I'm now moving because I don't trust their immoral business model. These fools are the Ryanair of the Health Insurance world! Would you trust Michael O'Leary to see you through illness? Didn't think so!

They change goal posts annually with fundamental information hidden away on page 30 of a 40 page booklet! Now all my hard work in the gym doesn't count against my premium because of a simple recording practice that worked fine in year 1 but has now been made redundant in year 2. Insurance will double next year unless I pay Pru £200 for new health checks. Tactics? I think so!

Year 1 - 75% discount on gyms. Year 2 - 25% discount. Calculated? Remind you of your savings account?!

Staff are rude and disrespectful. Nothing gets done after you put the phone down so resolve issue over the phone or give up!

There's a special place in hell for Pru Health. Horrible Company!

I am confused harry

Were you buyning medical insurance or a gym membership?

Issues encountered with claim for psychiatric help

Where do I start? I suffered a bout of depression, and went to see my GP. If you are in such a state, you are not in the best frame of mind to deal with the stonewalling and kafkaesque practices of PruHealth. You are quite likely to think "Is it worth the hassle", despite the fact that you are paying for a service and have a legitimate need of the resource.

What I did not realise is that you have to do research on practitioners, to confirm that they are on the PruHealth list. (Practitioners so mention on their websites if they deal with Pru, or other healthcare insurers.) Otherwise, they refuse to pay. Their stonewall answer is that the practitioner should be registered with the GMC, which is like asking a fishmonger to confirm that he is a CORGI registered gas fitter before you are prepared to buy any fish from him. (In my opinion, any practitioner with a relevant accreditation (i.e. UKCP, BCP) should be deemed acceptable).

Having followed their kafkaesque process, and having had an initial consultation with a specialist, PruHealth pared back the amount of sessions to 33% of the amount recommended by the practitioner!

At the time, I was given a load of flannel that "one of our representatives will contact you". Not only do they neglect to contact you, this forestalling means you have nothing in writing with regard to the status of what should be an open-and-shut authorisation. It was several weeks after having seen the specialist that I was advised on the phone that the funded treatment was considerably lower than that recommended.

The most efficient thing they have done has been to send a "how to complain to the Ombudsman" document, which I interpreted as "Go &&&& yourself, we don't care, and what can you do?"

I gather that a number of my colleagues have experienced considerable issues with PruHealth. I see that one reviewer has made the wry observation that 'These fools are the Ryanair of the Health Insurance world!' Not even British Gas could out-do PruHealth in terms of poor quality service.

I would steer clear of this cowboy organisation.

Their stonewall answer is that the practitioner should be registered with the GMC

Every single Doctor, regardless of grade, who practises in the United Kingdom is registered with the GMC.

http://webcache.gmc-uk.org/gmclrmp_enu/start.swe?SWECmd=GotoView&_sn=z6cyCEL5WCsSgg9dTCP9iJPyRZsJQgNvmrx.P.4XDCw_&SWEView=GMC+WEB+Doctor+Search&SWEHo=webcache.gmc-uk.org&SWETS=1323261399&SWEApplet=GMC+WEB+Health+Provider+Search+Applet

It seems 1000's of people became dissatisfied withPru Health over the last year because Pru Health took away hard earned discounts at the same time as substantially increasing premiums.

We had continuous (family) cover for 7 yearsusually with Gold (once Platinum) vitality discounts - which included"discounted" (to similar levels that any group discount would attractat Cannons / Nuffield) but not free gym membership.

I accept that insurers have the right to tweak terms and conditions and / or increase premiums a little ahead of inflation andPRU consistently did both.

I also accept that, with notice, this can includerevisions to No Claims and other discounts - like Vitality.

However, I do not accept that it was within any reasonable definition of "Fair Trading" for PRU HEALTH to, in oneyear, do away with all my vitality and most of the value of my no claimsdiscounts.

We have never made a claim of any kind yet ourmonthly premiums went through the roof!

But the very worst thing was that 6 weeks before renewal I shopped around and got a written quote - on Pru Health paper - from abroker for identical family cover that was more than 40% less than my renewal quote. The Broker confirmed that this was not an introductory or reduced ratebut the full standard premium!

I sent this through to PRU Health saying that theyneeded to explain why they want me to pay almost double and to either set myrenewal at the same level as their quote via the broker or stop charging me premiums and definitely not renew my policy the next month. Pru Health saidthey would look into this.

I chased them for weeks and received only standard or evasive email replies until I realised they had renewed my policy at the inflated rate and were taking premiums from my bank account!

After months of complaining, in frustration I wentto the Financial Ombudsman Service. This did produce a response from Pru Healthin which they said they would refund my premiums for health and Gym (I'd takenout my own Gym membership meantime) back to my renewal date.

To date they appear to have refunded the health premiums but not the gym premiums, although in a call I made to them today they promised again to do this. The delay appears to be that they want me tosign a letter to say that it would be an end to the matter, which it would have been if not for a most unpleasant experience I had today.

A Debt Collection Agency called Oriel Collections called me on my ex d number (which I hadn't given Pru) to try and collect the Pru health insurance premiums that Pru Health themselves had refunded to me as part of the FOS complaint!!!!

I gave Oriel the full details including FOS refsetc. but they (a manager their) still refused to agree not to contact me again- in direct contravention of OFT Debt Collection rules.

Now I no longer feel so incline to sign a letter letting Pru Health off and instead have looked into the matter again.

It seems I'm just one of many to be treated unfairly by Pru Health.

When I took out the policy I had a "reasonable expectation" that with normal business practices and normal insurance cost rises my policy would continue. But it seems that as soon as we were out of the 5 year moratorium period and had built up substantial no claims and Vitality discounts Pru Health were trying to force loyal existing policy holders to re-apply all over again and face years more of pre-existing moratoriums and building up no claims discounts, or pay almost double premiums! (47% more in our case for same cover, compared against newly underwritten policy).

This is dishonest trading to my mind. If an insurer indicates you are paying the full premium at commercial rates, there is a reasonable expectation that, where no claims are made, the policy will continue, subject to minor changes to terms and inflation / slightly ahead of inflation increases in premium.

To effectively double premiums to force loyal policy holders to give up no claims and other discounts, so that you can put them through re-underwriting and impose new claim moratoriums, just to increase your profits by forcing a de-risking of your existing client base, is immoral - and as far as I can see illegal.

If lawyers on here can tell me it is technically legal under UK law, that may be one thing - But it certainly is unfair trading and the OFT should have issued a stop now notice and at the very least should be investigating the matter now.

In the end, maybe it will take one of those claims companies, that can see the PPI project coming to a close, who will jump on this and get premiums back for Pru Health clients.

Certainly, I would never have taken out a policy with Pru Health if I had known they would ever be allowed to get away with forcing existing policy holder to be fully re-underwritten every few years - defeats the point of having insurance, building up no claims discounts anda greeing to moratoriums on pre-existing conditions.

Please, if anyone else has had any similar experiences add them to this forum.

I was covered with Standard Life Healthcare through my company scheme for a number of years until PruHealth (aka Discovery, South Africa) took over in 2010. Standard always provided a world class customer service - one call and treatment was authorised and covered in full. I'd previously been covered with BUPA and PPP and both were bad.......until I experienced Pru! I recently had to claim and they made me feel like a criminal.......they put a blocker at every stage of the claiming process and everything was my responsibility to provide for them (what do we pay them for?). Not only that, I had a call from my Consultant yesterday saying that they wrote to him telling him his consultation fee was £20 too high. Who on earth do these people think they are? As my consultant says, he charges the same rate to all patients whether insurered or not.....and PruHealth are the only people that seem to have a problem. It's clear to me that they are trying to make the claiming process as difficult as possible in the hope that I'll simply have treatment on the NHS. What's the point having insurance???