Key Post Laya allows you to cut the premium by designing your own policy!

dublin66

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Like so many others I recently renewed my health insurance. I was on what I would regard as a fairly typical scheme (Laya Company Care with excess). My renewal quote was about 30% higher than last year.

I looked at the Health Insurance Authority website which left me a bit baffled to be honest and I also spoke to a broker. Neither source particularly inspired me and I was left more confused than when I started.

I then found the Laya "design your own policy" website and it saved me approximately 50% of my renewal figure. There are 3 variables - type of hospital care you want, excess you are prepared to pay for inpatient care and what type of cover you want for out-patient. I was very impressed with the simplicity of the site and the results. The other health insurance providers may have something similar but I didn't find it. Link is below.

https://www.layahealthcare.ie/create/#/createscheme?planID=600&adults=1&children=0&students=0

I have no connection with Laya other than being a customer.
 
Well done. Looks very good, given the current high costs of alternative cover. I have been looking for a deal that gives good basic cover withyout the add on bells and whistles which I have paid for but never needed to date. I will certainly be looking postively at this option. I had a similar experience recently in renewing my home insurance. Saved a considerable amount by cutting out flood cover and agreeing to an excess of €500. Would be very interested if other posters had similar examples of savings.
 
Thanks so much for posting this link Dublin66. I've spent hours going around the different sites, including the HIA website and the whole area really is a minefield. Using the laya link I've calculated that I can get full (semi-private) accommodation in all hospitals with €250 excess and outpatient care with excess of €150 for a cost of €763.20 per annum. My current VHI First Plan Plus policy is €1,191 p.a. and includes a lot of 'everyday' expense cover that I just don't use. As far as I can see there's nothing else I need to cover. If you're reading this and think I might be overlooking something, I'd be grateful for the advice...
 
Ya this is great option. Signed up for Laya Flex Care 500 . Two of us only costing 1,100.
Damn good policy. 500 excess. Was on Laya
Essential Connect last year and this new policy is saving me 500 euro and good benefits.
 
This is extraordinary.

I am happy to pay most of my own health expenses, but just want cover in the event of some really expensive long-term treatment.

So using this, I went for the maximum excess of €500 per claim and €200 per night "shortfall" in the hi-tech hospitals and only standard everyday medical expenses.

The quote from Laya is €590 per year compared to €3468 for my existing Aviva We Plan Level 4!

I rang Aviva based on it, and they suggested a Business Plan Complete which has various excesses, but it still comes in at €1,544.

I wonder if I am overlooking something big?

I used the Laya tool and minimised the excess, maximimised the everyday expenses, and it still came out at only €1,500.

What on earth was I getting from Aviva We Plan Level 4 to justify the extra €2,000?
 
dublin66

Thanks very much for this. Your description

I looked at the Health Insurance Authority website which left me a bit baffled to be honest and I also spoke to a broker. Neither source particularly inspired me and I was left more confused than when I started.
is exactly how I felt and I am busy, so I was thinking, "Ah, just renew it and don't confuse yourself".

Brendan
 
This is getting more and more ridiculous

I decided to see how much Laya charges for the full bells and whistles cover. I ended up with the following choice

Company CareGold: €3,437
HealthManager Gold: €5,134

I could see no difference so I rang them. They told me that there was no difference - just that Helathmanager is an old policy and few people opt for it.

I then compared CompanyCare Gold with the Flex 500 Explore at €590.

By not paying €2,800 a year, I have to pay for the following
1) some contribution to day to day medical expenses
2) a €500 excess on each claim
3) An addtional €200 per night in the hi tech hospitals.

So by going for the cheaper cover, I will lose out only if I spend more than 11 nights in the Mater Private!
 
Brendan,

They are all at it...one just has to do the research/digging. I know hia website can be a pain, but if you spend long enough you'll find better suited plans.

Its just like the banks, they expect most to just renew...

S.
 
dublin66 ... get on to LAYA quickly.

Tell 'em you want commission because the link you have posted here is going to get them lots of business.

My policy with VHI is out next month and I'll be going with Laya ... with highest excess etc.
 
Thanks OP. I haven't had health insurance since I was in college but will use this to start now.

My main concern was that given my age (mid-40s) that virtually everything I'd be diagnosed with now might be regarded by the insurers as a pre-occurring condition, even if it had not been diagnosed previously, how strict are they with this and at what stage would you know that the claim wasn't being paid?

Could you end up in a situation where you have, in good faith, presented at a hi-tech hospital, spend a number of days there having treatment only to find out that your claim is denied and facing a huge bill afterwards?
 
I looked at the Health Insurance Authority website which left me a bit baffled to be honest



Just to follow up on the above, I requested the data underlying the HIA website with the aim of putting together a simple spreadsheet with the current data to inform my own plan choice (renewal soon). HIA said that they could not provide this to me. Their website is very limited as you can only see three plans at a time when "comparing" plans.

I was thinking of requesting it by FOI, but I suppose you can only FOI data that is unavailable otherwise. In this case, the information is available but not in the format that I would like. If I get the data into a spreadsheet through manual means (copy and paste), I will post it here. It would be great if the HIA website was more like this tool from Layla!
 
It would be great if the HIA website was more like this tool from Layla!

I was coming to the same conclusion.

Aviva have 71 separate plans and the names tell me absolutely nothing about the contents. There might be a great plan in there, but I am not going to trawl through them all and then those of the other three companies.

It would be great if there was a Laya like decision tree.

1) What type of hospital do you want?
2) Are you prepared to pay a €200 per day contribution for a bed in a hi-tech hospital?
3) Do you want cover for your day to day GP type expenses?
4) Do you want cover for visits to specialists?
5) How much of an excess are you prepared to pay?
6) Do you want maternity cover?
7) Do you want Complementary and Alternative Therapies?

Then it would shoot out the choices.

The report could be broken down into two sections
These policies have the same cover for the following:

These policies have the following differences:
 
Couldn't agree more! The HIA site throws up so many results that meaningful comparison is still very unwieldy. I definitely think the regulator should step in here.
What we need is a relatively small number of plans standardised across all insurers so we can compare like with like.
 
The problem for the regulator is that the Health Insurance companies are deliberately increasing the number of plans to stymie the comparison site which was useful when there were fewer plans.

Having something similar to the Laya plan would be useful alright.

I'm sure I heard previously that all policies had to include Maternity Benefit on equality grounds, though can't find where I found that out, seems odd alright.
 
I'm sure I heard previously that all policies had to include Maternity Benefit on equality grounds, though can't find where I found that out, seems odd alright.

I always wondered why every policy had maternity benefit. Men don't need it. There are lots of women who might decide they don't want it for whatever reason.
 
Dublin66 thank you so much for the link, I've managed to reduce mine by about €600 for myself and my son. We went from an "Essential" policy to a flex250. Mine was up for renewal at the end of the month, just by using your link I've saved all the that money and still got cover I'm happy with. I've heard Charlie Weston talk about these policies on the radio, apparently when you ring up to renew the agents won't tell you about them, you have to quote the one you want and then they will change for you.
 
While the Laya decision tree is simple, you should know that it doesn't give you all of their policies or their cheapest policies for the cover you've selected.

I would suggest maybe looking at Laya's other policies on the HIA website after you've used Laya's decision tree. You can very easily get the HIA site to select only Laya by opting for "No-restricted procedures" in the refine options.

While Laya offers fantastic value for money, they do have multiple plans at different prices all offering the same thing so its worth digging through them.
 
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