Hi Faolteam,
Your situation is a little complicated with a quite a few things to factor in. I'll try my best to help.
Loading has already been mentioned, this will add 50% to your premium for 10 years.
Another is pre existing conditions. It's important to understand this definition. You can't claim for these for 5 years. Here is laya's for example:
Pre-existing condition: an ailment, illness or condition, where, on the basis of medical advice, the signs or symptoms of that ailment, illness or condition existed at any time in the period of 6 months preceding:
a) the day you took out a Health insurance contract for the first time;
or
b) the day you took out a Health insurance contract again after your previous Health insurance contract had lapsed for 13 weeks or more;
or
c) the day you changed your scheme and gained additional cover/benefits.
Our medical advisors will determine the onset date of your ailment, illness or condition in conjunction with your medical records. Their decision is final.
Essentially anything that can be medically traced back to existing within the 6 months prior to you taking out insurance is considered pre existing. It doesn't matter if you knew about it or not. In reality this means anything your gp or consultant wrote down in your medical notes that can be accessible by the insurer in the event of a claim. It's worth nothing the final sentence. "Their decision is final". Vhi is the only insurer not to state this and therefore could be considered to be the most lenient in this regard.
Taking both these factors into account and the fact you stated you are currently healthy ( which I imagine means your day to day claims are low) it would appear that perhaps the best of course of action would be to take a cheaper high excess plan. This would allow you to save the money up front and only in the event of a claim you could spend it on the excess then.
Something to note is that once a condition exists, you will be then subjected to a separate 2 year waiting period for hospital benefits if you were to subsequently upgrade your plan for this illness. For example your excess is €600 and you claim for a new condition. If you upgrade your plan to a €150 excess, the new excess will apply immediately for all new conditions after the upgrade, but the older €600 will still apply for 2 years after the upgrade for the pre existing condition only.
VHI 360 centres are the best urgent care offering on the market. They are definitely worth considering if this is an element of importance to you. However of the top of my head I would highly consider Laya plans in your case for the following two reasons. Laya plans tend to cover the most common orthopedic procedures without an excess, which given your age, may prove to be very worthy. Also Laya are the only insurer to usually allow you to upgrade your plan mid year, as long as the hospital cover is the same or above on the new plan. They are also the only insurer not to place an upgrade waiting period of 6 months for day to day cover at your age group. This means if you took a cheaper plan, then needed a lot of claims on day to day expenses such as consultants, physio etc you could upgrade with laya and claim straight away. With the other insurers you would have to wait until renewal and then a further 6 months after the upgrade.
Have a look at Laya Precision 600 Connect. The only downside to a cheaper plan is that cover in the so called "high tech" hospitals is more limited. It's only for orthopedic and cardiac. However you'd still have access to other hospitals in the Dublin region such as the hermitage and the sports surgery clinic. Hospitals that matter will depend on where you live. If you want to reduced the excess a bit look at Laya Precision 300 Connect. A plan priced in the middle of these from VHI is Enhanced care 350. It has a 40% shortfall for orthopedic procedure though.
If you need good day to day cover from the start then you would want a corporate plan, have a look at laya inspire. A corporate plan that also fully covers orthopedic procedures is more expensive again eg laya simply connect. However with loading this will cost a decent amount more over the 10 years so is only really worth it if you think you'll claim regularly enough over that period. Otherwise you might be better off putting aside the saved money and spending as needed, then upgrading as required and enduring the cost then.
Hope this helps.