Smoking Damages Your Health Insurance Premium

Smoking is one factor which will affect the amount you pay for your private health care. Other factors are your gender, your age and your general lifestyle, including how much you drink and how overweight you are.

Of all the preventable killers smoking provides the greatest risk and this is reflected in the cost of your medical insurance premiums. If you want cheap medical insurance you need to stop smoking. But stopping now won't give you cheaper cover immediately. There is an average period of three years from the time you stop smoking before the medical insurance companies treat you as if you are a non-smoker. This reflects the potentially long-lasting effects of smoking.

Below is a comparative look at PruHealth's premiums for a smoking and non-smoking 35 year old man. The figures were collected on 6th February 2009:

Basic Cover
Smoker £40.93
Non-smoker £37.44

Mid-Range Cover
Smoker £48.60
Non-smoker £44.45

Comprehensive Cover
Smoker £60.73
Non-smoker £55.55

With the Pru Health Vitality programme you can pay decreased premiums if you follow a healthy lifestyle and that includes if you don't smoke. They also help you to stop smoking by providing discounted rates for courses at Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking.

BUPA have recently launched a new tool (in conjunction with Facebook) to help people give up smoking . The tool measures how long you have been a non-smoker and encourages your contacts to suppport your continued efforts to give up. Senior health editor at BUPA Alastair McQueen said "QuitClock is the first Facebook application BUPA has released. It's a new way to engage people who use social networking sites and who want to stop smoking." The highest proportion of smokers is young people so anything which engages this age group is beneficial.

So what is it that private medical insurance companies are worried about when it comes to smoking and why do smokers have to pay more?

114,000 people a year die in the UK of smoking-related diseases including lung cancer, cardio-vascular diseases and emphysema. Smoking cuts your life expectancy by seven years and according to netdoctor.co.uk:

'the number of people under the age of 70 who die from smoking-related diseases exceeds the total figure for deaths caused by breast cancer, AIDS, traffic accidents and drug addiction. '

ASH is a charity which provides information about smoking and publishes reports about the health effect of smoking.

Because people know that smoking is likely to increase their health premium they may lie when applying for private health care cover. The discovery of any lies will immediately invalidate any claim you might make whether it is related to smoking or not. With a recent increase in insurance fraud, insurers will be more vigilant to this in future. Nick Starling from the Association of British Insurers, said that, 'honesty is the only policy. Cheating to get cheaper insurance puts your cover in jeopardy, with potentially disastrous consequences.'