Almost one in eight Britons now has medical insurance – the highest proportion since 2008 – with NHS care delays driving a rise in people using private healthcare.

The number of people covered by a private medical insurance policy hit a record high of 4.68 million at the end of 2023, according to private healthcare analysts LaingBuisson.

Eight million people in the UK can now access private healthcare using insurance, once the spouses, partners and children of policyholders are included. That represents 11.8% of the UK’s 68.3 million population, the highest percentage since 12.3% in 2008 – before the financial crash prompted a fall in firms paying for private medical cover for their staff and individuals opting for it.

Four out of five of the 4.9 million policyholders – 3.8 million people – were covered by a policy their employer had taken out, while the rest had taken out policies as individuals.

The recent surge in the use of private healthcare means that the total value of all medical and dental cover reached a record £7.59bn by the end of 2023, up from £6.76bn the year before.

Tim Read, LaingBuisson’s head of research and author of the report on the UK health insurance market, said: “The rise in people covered by health insurance is being driven by both a rise in the number of companies taking out insurance on behalf of their employees, but there has also been a rise in the number of individuals taking out their own policies.

“Given we’ve seen people’s satisfaction with the NHS plummeting in recent years, and also continued challenges in accessing both diagnostic and treatment services on the NHS, this rise is not a surprise.

“In the past people may have taken out health insurance because it offered a better quality of service than the NHS. But now they value timely access more highly and increasingly are willing to pay for it.”

Private medical cover accounted for £6.15bn of the £7.59bn total market value – up 12.2% on a year earlier. The rest of that was made up of people spending £1.05bn on dental insurance – the first time that had crossed the £1bn threshold – and £435m on health cash plans, which typically cost £150 to £200 a year and provide access to private GPs and private diagnostic services, but not treatment.

Four big insurance firms – Aviva, AXA Health, Bupa and Vitality Health – have 95% of the private medical insurance market between them, LaingBuisson said.