Money Box Live: Private Healthcare

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More of us than ever before have access to private medical insurance. New data shared with Money Box Live shows that more than 8 million people were covered last year - that's about 5 million adults, plus their families. It's a rise of 4% on the previous year and comes after a series of sharp increases since the pandemic.

We find out what's driving the growth, who's buying the policies and hear from those who have used private health services.

We're joined by Tim Read, director of research at the health sector data firm LaingBuisson which is behind the numbers and has just published its annual study into the private medical cover market, and Tina Jennings, general secretary of the Association of Medical Insurers and Intermediaries, a trade body representing insurance companies and brokers working in this field.

Presenter: Felicity Hannah Producer: James Graham Editor: Jess Quayle Senior News Editor: Sara Wadeson (This episode was first broadcast at 3pm on Radio 4 on Wednesday the 1st of October 2025).

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron.
0:10.5	Evil genius.
0:11.6	He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it.
0:15.5	That's like hiding at your own funeral.
0:17.1	Yeah, a bit great gig.
0:18.6	I'm Russell Kane.
0:19.6	Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius.
0:24.1	Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius.
0:26.4	It also helps it.
0:27.4	It's a long time ago, right?
0:29.4	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:34.9	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:40.6	Hello, more of us than ever before have private medical cover. New data shared with the Moneybox Live podcast shows that more than
0:45.8	8 million people had private health insurance last year. That's about 5 million adults plus their
0:51.7	families. And it's a rise of 4% on the previous year. In fact, since
0:56.4	2019, the number of people with this kind of insurance has risen 24%. In today's episode, we're
1:03.0	hearing from people who use these policies. And let's start by speaking to Emma about how her family
1:08.2	have used her husband's work health insurance policy. My husband had a
1:12.7	herniated disc. My husband, very fortunately, does have private healthcare through his work, and he was
1:19.1	very quickly on a course of treatment and back on the way to full health. So the experience was that
1:24.6	once we'd gone to the private healthcare, it did move really, really
	...

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