Medical insurance is a type of insurance cover, which as a rule should provide insured individual with a compensation of expenses related to the medical treatment of an illness which, has occurred during the period of insurance policy. In the same manner as all other classes of insurance, the indemnity is not payable in any event and also not always in the amount, which you expect to receive from insurer.

Most of the leading insurers, in addition to the cover, are offering service to organise diagnostics and medical treatment on the basis of the network of medical institutions which have contractual agreements with insurer. In case if client requires a medical treatment, the insured person would have to contact special co-ordinating centre working 24 hours a day and which shall organise the required medical treatment.

This sort of "additional service", in a way is a compulsory condition of the policy as some insurers either limits or does not allow the Insured to approach medical institution directly. In many cases, such a restriction does not apply to so-called urgent or emergency medical condition. In addition, some insurers include a provision, which allows an Insured to receive a treatment outside the pre-set network of medical institutions, however this would be subject to a separate insurers' consent. It should be said that the mechanism of receiving the consent referred to above is not always clear which may lead to a dispute between insurer and client.

From one point of view, providing additional service by organising medical treatment through own network of medical clinics, insurance companies restricts or limits the clients' freedom to chose a medical institution but maintains efficient control over expenses from medical service provided to the Insured. On the other hand, an insurance company, in fact, becomes a large client buying medical service which gives them the power to control the quality of service provided and therefore the ability to keep its' customers satisfied.

In view of the above, to make a good choice of insurer for medical cover, it is important to evaluate the professionalism and experience of its' medical team in addition to the financial standing of the insurance company. Also it makes sense to assess the network of medical institution which you can use in even of an illness.

Generally speaking, we believe that making a good choice of medical cover out of those, which are available on the market, is one of the most complicated assignments. This is not only due to some technical problems but also mostly due to the fact that people buying medical insurance, in many cases are getting disappointed because their initial expectations were unreasonably high.

Most people believe that if they have purchased medical insurance they become immuned against all types of illnesses or even if they do become, ill then they will get quick and guaranteed recovery. It is necessary to remember that medical service is provided by medical institution and not by insurance company. The level of medical service as such can not be much different from the level of medicine in the country.

Sometimes insurance companies are trying to improve the surrounding conditions, for example, in certain cases arranging for more comfortable room in the hospital for in-patient treatment. But this is not always possible, as the selection of a particular medical clinic is first of all dictated by purely medical reasons and if a specialised cardio centre has no vacant comfortable room then it is not fair to expect the insurance company to built one. In many cases clients do complain that insurer refuses to organise delivery of food to a hospital room according to the preferences of in-patient treatment. We believe that in this case the insurer's position is reasonable as insurance covers medical treatment and the restaurant business is something different.

In other words, many clients expect that private insurance will come as a complete replacement of the National Healthcare System. Although we always work in our clients' interest and not in the interests of insurance companies, we believe that this kind of approach is inappropriate and we would like to warn everyone against unjustifiable expectation.

On the basis of the proceeding discussion, medical insurance is quite a complex question. If you require more information we kindly invite you to contact our consultants.