Research published by Which? in July 2026 puts core private medical insurance at around £33 a month for a healthy 30 year old, £56 at 50 and £81 at 60, with comprehensive cover roughly 70% more. The honest answer is a range, because age, postcode, hospital list, excess and outpatient cover each move the price substantially.
Most cost guides either dodge the numbers or invent them. These are real figures: average sample quotes gathered in June 2026 for a Which? investigation into how premiums change with age, and we have set out the assumptions behind them so you can judge how far they apply to you.
Typical monthly premiums by age
| Age | Core cover | Comprehensive cover |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | £33 | £56 |
| 40 | £41 | £72 |
| 50 | £56 | £96 |
| 60 | £81 | £139 |
| 70 | £127 | £214 |
| 80 | £178 | £280 |
Source: Which?, "Private health insurance costs by age", published 21 July 2026, using June 2026 quotes compiled by the broker LifeSearch. The quotes assume a single non-smoker in an Oxford postcode on a guided hospital list with a standard excess, typically £250. Core cover means inpatient and day-patient treatment with full cancer cover and a virtual GP; comprehensive adds outpatient consultations and diagnostics. The figures at 80 reflect only the insurers that would quote at that age. Figures are rounded to the pound.
Treat these as a map, not a quote. A different postcode, a fuller hospital list or a richer outpatient benefit can move any of these figures meaningfully in either direction.
What actually sets your premium
- Age is the biggest factor, as the table shows. Premiums rise with age because claims do.
- Where you live. Private treatment costs more in London and the South East, and premiums reflect local hospital pricing.
- Hospital list. A guided or essential list, where the insurer directs you to a panel of hospitals and consultants, is typically substantially cheaper than an open list including the big London names.
- Outpatient cover. Full outpatient cover costs more than a capped limit; no outpatient cover is cheaper again, but means diagnostics may fall to you or the NHS.
- Excess. The amount you pay towards a claim in a policy year. Moving from £100 to £250 or £500 is one of the cleaner ways to cut the premium without cutting what the policy covers.
- Extras. Dental, optical, travel and enhanced mental health cover each add cost.
- Insurance Premium Tax at 12% applies to every PMI premium and is included in quoted prices.
Keeping the cost sensible without gutting the cover
The lever people reach for first, stripping benefits to hit a price, is usually the wrong one, because the benefits removed tend to be the ones used. Better levers, broadly in order: accept a guided hospital list if the panel hospitals near you are good, which is worth checking rather than assuming; take a higher excess; cap rather than remove outpatient cover; and make sure the underwriting basis fits your history, which our guide to moratorium versus full medical underwriting explains. For families, check how each insurer prices children; the differences are larger than people expect.
Also budget for the premium to rise over time, not just with age. Our guide to why premiums rise every year covers what is normal, what is not, and what you can do at renewal.
Is it worth it?
That depends on what you are insuring against, so it helps to look at what private treatment costs when you pay for it yourself. There are two kinds of bill. The first is predictable and one-off: a joint replacement, a hernia repair, cataract surgery. Circle Health Group, one of the largest private hospital groups in the UK, publishes self-pay guide prices of around £12,750 to £14,500 for a hip replacement and £12,000 to £16,000 for a knee replacement, with knee packages starting from about £13,020 (Circle Health Group, 2026). Against the premiums in the table above, one knee is close to thirty years of a healthy 40 year old's core cover.
The second kind of bill is open-ended, and cancer is the clearest example. The Royal Marsden's published self-funding prices put a ten-fraction course of intensity-modulated radiotherapy at £16,275, before consultant fees (The Royal Marsden Private Care, 2026). Modern cancer drugs cost more again: pembrolizumab, one of the most widely used immunotherapies, has an NHS list price of £2,630 per 100 mg vial (NICE, March 2026); at its standard 200 mg dose every three weeks that is about £5,260 per dose, or in the region of £89,000 for a year of treatment at list price, before the cost of giving it. Nobody can budget for that from savings, and it is the kind of claim a good policy exists to pay.
So the honest answer is that self-paying is a reasonable choice for someone who wants to cover a single predictable operation and can write the cheque. Insurance is for the risks you cannot see coming and cannot cap, and most people buy it for the second reason. Which is right for you depends on your circumstances; it is a question we are happy to talk through either way.
If a company pays instead
For directors and business owners the arithmetic often changes. Premiums paid by a company for employees, including directors, are normally an allowable business expense, treated as a benefit in kind for the individual with the employer reporting and National Insurance that follows, and company schemes are priced on a different basis from personal policies, sometimes favourably. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change, and nothing here is tax advice. From modest scheme sizes upwards, underwriting options open up that personal policies cannot match, including medical history disregarded terms, which our guide to pre-existing conditions explains. If you own a business and are pricing personal cover, price the company route alongside it before deciding; the comparison takes little time and can change the answer.
Figures above are market averages at the date shown, not quotes, and this guide is general information rather than advice. For a real number for your circumstances, a short conversation with us gets you quotes across the leading insurers on a like for like basis, at no additional cost to you: we receive commission from the insurer.