Health cover switch sounds easy — until you try it

Health insurance portability was meant to let policyholders switch insurers without losing continuity benefits such as credit for waiting periods already served. On paper, it was a major consumer reform. In reality, many policyholders find that changing insurers is still far harder than it sounds. Health insurance may be renewed every year, but a person’s medical history follows them for life. Age, illness or past claims can make a new insurer reluctant to take a customer on.
Portability was introduced in 2011 to address exactly this problem. Before that, anyone who changed insurers usually had to start afresh, with waiting periods beginning again. The new rules were meant to allow policyholders to move without automatically losing continuity benefits.