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Hot topics : 2010

In "Hot topics", Ian Youngman, Private Healthcare UK's health insurance writer, examines some of the key issues that affect health insurance coverage and premiums.

Can insurers offer long-term care insurance? MetLife will halt sales of long-term care insurance, a type of coverage that has repeatedly caused problems for insurers and forced some to pay significantly more in claims than they expected.
Why do some insurers think they are above the law? Every time we get new proposals for legislation that improves equality on age and sex, you can guarantee that a trade body, insurer or insurance committee will whine and whinge that the law should...
Get paid for getting healthier - not as daft as it sounds? The majority of NICE's independent Citizens Council advisory group made up of members of the public believes that incentive systems could be an effective way of encouraging people to change their...
Will insurers and consumers benefit from major healthcare reforms? The coalition government's aim is to free up provision of healthcare, so that in most sectors of care, any willing provider can provide services, giving patients greater choice and ensuring effective...
The increased need to search for individual income protection insurance The new government has many ideas, but much of what they plan is based on a simple concept that too many people are passive. Over the last two decades, we have been bombarded with new laws,...
Will new regulation work? Partly as a punishment for totally missing warnings on the banking collapse, as well as lesser failures to spot collapsing insurers and intermediaries, the government intends to transfer the...
Term Life or Whole Life Insurance? In the last few years, the real price of life insurance has fallen. This has also meant a bigger gap between the cost of term life and whole life.
Do we need health insurance shops? In the USA, Highmark recently announced that it will open four additional Highmark Direct retail health insurance stores in Pennsylvania, including three stores in the Pittsburgh area and one store...
Why tinkering with critical illness reveals fundamental problems in product design The Association of British Insurers and its working party, the group handling the statement of best practice for critical illness cover, wants financial advisers to help it find a new name for total...
A Healthier Nation Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, recently launched the Conservative Party's green paper on public health - A Healthier Nation.
Personal health budgets Last year the Government pledged its commitment to creating a more personalised and responsive NHS by nominating 70 sites across England as provisional pilots for personal health budgets. Of these,...