Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Wisdom Chat.

And today my very special guest is Lao Watson, who is a healthcare specialist with WPA.

Lyle, lovely to have you with us.

Yeah.

Looking forward to talking to you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lyle, tell us a little bit about WPA and the work that it does and what you do.

Okay, well, WPA is a not for profit, private medical insurer.

Not for profit, meaning that because we don't have any shareholders, we are only really interested in the health and wellbeing of our members.

People ask me about notforprofit and it really just means that because we've been going 121 years and have accumulated reserves, the income that we're able now to take from our reserves covers all of our central overhead, it covers all of the advice fees, the fees that I get paid because we haven't any shareholders and we're not advertising.

All that we seek to collect from our members is that which we believe we're going to have to pay out in claims.

So, technically, I don't really see how you can imagine we would get a cheaper premium if we've got no overheads, no shareholders, and we're really only just collecting that which we think we're going to have to part with, if you see what I mean.

Yeah, that's the not for profit bit.

121 years old, I've mentioned.

Wow.

So it does set us apart in the marketplace.

And I do private medical insurance for both individuals and their families and for businesses ranging from 2000 to 2000 people.

Right, that's excellent.

I'm just thinking while you're talking then, Lyle, why would anybody need medical insurance or private medical insurance?

Medical insurance is very topical at the minute.

WPA have had their best ever January, they've had their best ever February and so on.

Every month of this year has been our best ever of that month ever in 121 years.

And it's because people are turning to private medical insurance now as a result of the fact that covet hasn't helped.

But the NHS, brilliant as it is, and indeed it is, if the matter in hand is not an emergency, then you just have to go to the back of the queue, which, if you put the queues together in the NHS, it's over 10 million people waiting upon the NHS in some way, shape or form, avoiding those queues.

That is why you have private medical insurance.

Talking about the queues, I was just reading yesterday that the waiting list of, I think, operations, wherever they may be, was somewhere over 12,000.

At the moment, 6.6 million people are waiting for hospital treatment right.

Of any procedure, be it a theatre procedure or physiotherapy or whatever, that's 6.6 million.

But the queues, if you total them together, over 10 million.

Because before you get to your hospital appointment for a procedure, you've got to see a consultant, which can take six months, twelve months.

You've then seen the consultant, you've got to have a diagnostic test, be that an MRI scan or a CT scan or whatever, that could be another six or twelve months.

So you add these queues together, it takes you to over 10 million people.

The Director of NHS England in November 20 went on the 10:00 news and made a surprising statement that if you are not an emergency by that they find not likely to die within 48 hours, then you can no longer expect the NHS to be there for you all statement from the Director of NHS.

England it is, and it's quite worrying as well, because, I mean, the news items that have been at the forefront of the moment, starting with, for example, ambulances and people waiting several hours for an ambulance to arrive.

And obviously we've had one or two stories in the news about the repercussions of that.

But also in terms of, as you say, these waiting lists, they're phenomenal.

And I know even in my own local GP, it's not always easy to get an appointment.

You may be waiting several days a week to actually get to see somebody.

My wife came up a couple of months ago on a Monday morning about 10:00 to my office and said, I can't do this anymore.

She'd been hanging on for 42 minutes, she said, with our local surgery to make an appointment to go and see someone.

And I said to, well, of course you do remember, Ali, that we've got a remote GP service with WPA.

So you just need to pick the phone up and get a GP to ring you back when at a time that suits you, that GP will give you a prescription, will email you a prescription, or they will email you a referral to a consultant if that's the outcome.

So she did that and she got a prescription by email before lunch.

She'd spent 42 minutes or 52 minutes, I can't remember which, just trying to make an appointment with the GP.

Yeah.

So that's an additional service that is free with WPA, the remote GP.

I mean, that's excellent.

And it just goes to show that there are ways and means in which you can get a more immediate response to your particular need.

Some people might say, well, isn't that undermining the NHS?

If I'm going down this particular route, I'm circumventing those queues.

And what about everybody else?

I'm sure you'll have come across a time somebody sort of making a comment or something, but how would you explain to them the importance of what you're doing and why would be beneficial for them?

Well, the reason that it's a two speed system and it has always been, is that when a consultant becomes qualified, they are asked by the NHS to contract to the NHS a number of half days per week of their time.

So the NHS says to a consultant, newly qualified chap, your working week is in ten half days.

How many of those are you going to work in the NHS?

So if he was a consultant radiologist or the guy who takes the X rays and the scans or whatever, his private Practise might not be that great.

So we might just give half a day to private Practise and four and a half days to the NHS.

Whereas an orthopaedic consultant, somebody who specialises in knee surgery, for example, he could probably do ten half days a week private Practise.

But let's just say he splits his working week 50 50.

So you go to your GP or you use the remote GP with WPA.

He emails you or she emails you a referral to a consultant with WPA, you choose which consultant you want to see.

So if you ring the Practise of the consultant, the details of which are on the WPA website, you ring consultants of your choice.

And if you don't mention to the person at the end of the phone that you want a private appointment with the consultant, the consultant secretary will say, I'm afraid he can't see you for 26 months, but that will be 26 months on Thursday at 02:00.

And you say, Actually, I'm with WPM, a private patient.

He says, Oh, well, he sees private patients on a Thursday or Friday.

He's got a 1015 on Thursday or a 930 on Friday.

Do either of those work for you?

So we're talking about a two year wait or three years.

That's your private medicine.

The same guy, yes.

And the thing that came to mind was, on the one hand, I can imagine some people who may not have private medical insurance feeling a little bit kind of put out by the fact that they have to go into that 24 month waiting list.

But having said, that one of the things that crops up time and time again, people think of these as being quite expensive.

And like anything, there's always the backstories people have heard and the myths.

What can we say to our listeners that would reassure them about not just the value of what we talked about, but also the cost to them?

And like you said, you were telling me the story earlier of how you then helped a business actually put in a scheme for all the staff of that business.

So, first of all, tell our listeners a little bit about the cost side.

I'm not talking about specifics, but just reassure them on that front and then tell us a story about what you did for the company.

Well, there are only two drivers to premium, so it's the age of the individual.

Clearly, the older you are, the more expensive you are to ensure, because you claim more often and the cost and value of your claims increases.

So you would expect to pay more in premium the older you are.

The other driver to premium is your location.

And by that postcode is what we take.

But by that I don't mean one side of the road or the other makes a difference to the premium.

It is simply that because we are only seeking to recover the cost of claims, if you had a specific procedure code in leads hernia or whatever that code is, you had that surgery, then you would pay 100 units for that procedure in leads.

But if you lived within the M 25, the cost of that procedure would be 140 units.

So because it's 40% more expensive to have treatment in London and surrounds we charge London customers 40% higher premiums, it's simply the cost of claims being recovered.

So those are the factors, age and location.

But if we said we were talking about people who live in West Yorkshire, for example, that's a block of premium priced, and a 30 year old would pay about £30 a month for a sort of relatively basic private medical insurance policy.

It's not run away silly money.

No, but from a business point of view, these are actually quite often they'll talk about perks or benefits to employees and these things like the private medical insurance, is actually a really good benefit for a company to have for its employees.

Tell us a little bit about the story you're referring to earlier.

It's becoming a very competitive market out there, which I must admit, I don't really understand why, but it seems as though employment is at its highest and unemployment at its lowest.

Yeah.

And that's something I don't really understand given the pandemic.

But because of that situation, people are really struggling.

Employers are struggling to get staff.

Yes.

And one of the ways in which they can attract and retain staff is by providing them with a decent set of employee benefits.

Now, that might be private medical insurance, but it could be pension, it could be life cover, it could be cycle to work, whatever it happens to be, there's a whole spectrum of employee benefits.

But WPA are seeing an uptick in the inquiries about private medical insurance as an employee benefit from the smaller businesses.

It is something that is a way of the employer putting their arm around their employees, say, look, we care about you and we're going to pay for this 30 year old on a group scheme.

It's actually 25 for a month, because group insurance is cheaper group rates and it's also a tax deductible.

So the $25 a month that the employer is paying for this 30 year old medical insurance is costing him 20 quit a month net of corporation tax.

So, again, it's not runaway silly money.

Yeah.

Going back to what you're saying about the employment at the moment, we do have the highest employment level, but we also have the highest level of positions available, but not enough people to fill those.

And that's why companies are really struggling.

I think one of the things that really come to the forefront is people looking at how do companies treat their employees?

So they're looking for the things that employers do to value their employees, hence why there's probably a spiking employee benefits, including things like private medical insurance, which in a way, doesn't surprise me, because for such a long time we've had things like Glassdoors, where people can put comments about employers or previous employers, and even the CEO of the company has comments, and these are the kind of things that people look at.

Now, I suppose, for yourselves and WPA, have you actually seen a spike in companies wanting to pursue this?

And if they are, how do they go about doing it?

What's the kind of process that they would go through?

Well, all they would need to do is go on to the WPA website and type in their postcode and they can get a quote themselves, or, based upon their location, their most local healthcare partner, which I'm one for, leads, and Bradford would make contact with them, ask all the relevant questions to get the information that's required in order to produce a quote.

Once the business has a quote, they then decide the value.

Yeah.

Make their choice accordingly.

They make a value judgement based on what the premium is.

And what they find for a younger workforce is that they can bolt onto the private medical insurance policy benefits, such as £200 a year of dental cash back for the employees, £200 a year of, as an example, at different levels, but £200 a year, say, of benefit for glasses and contact lenses.

And given that an employer who is employing people to sit as a monitor all day has a requirement or an obligation to provide them with a site test that's included.

So there's lots of reasons why the cashback extras that can be added on to medical insurance policies for not a lot of money, we're talking seven or £8 a month, that kind of figure for those benefits per person, make a very worthwhile position for employees.

Yes, that's wonderful.

I'm just conscious times passes by.

Yeah, it goes quickly, don't they?

Yeah.

For our listeners who may be interested in this and want to pursue it a bit more, how could they get hold of you?

Well, they can get hold of me on my mobile phone number, which is 788-6607 five or welcome to contact me via email to Lyle Watson.

So that's L-Y-L-E Watson at WPA hcp.org UK.

Thank you very much, Laura.

That's wonderful and I hope that's been really beneficial for our listeners.

I really appreciate you giving up your time to chat with me about this.

It's lovely to talk to you as well, and I know our pass will cross again many a time.

Enjoy the rest of your day, Lyle.

Thank you and you.

Bye.