A Medicash health cash plan review covering pricing, benefits, Trustpilot rating, and how it compares to alternatives for UK employers.
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Medicash suits mid-size employers who want broad cover, fast claims, and strong digital tools from £4.65 per employee per month. It is one of the most established cash plan providers in the UK, with a 4.6/5 Trustpilot rating. For smaller teams or tighter budgets, Simplyhealth and Westfield Health are the closest alternatives.
Medicash is one of the UK's best-known health cash plan providers, so it often appears on employers' shortlists.
Whether it's right for you depends on what you need it to do for your people. The level of cover you choose, the digital health services included, and how the plan fits alongside benefits like private medical insurance all shape what your employees get out of it.
This review explains what the Medicash health cash plan offers, what it costs, what users say, and how it compares with Simplyhealth, Healthshield, and Westfield Health.
Kota is an FCA-regulated broker and benefits platform that helps growing UK companies manage Medicash alongside private medical insurance, life insurance, and pensions.
That gives us a practical view of where a health cash plan fits within a wider benefits strategy, where it complements existing cover, and how employees engage with it. At the end of this review, we'll show you how Kota manages Medicash alongside the rest of your employee benefits, all in one platform.
Founded in Liverpool in 1871, Medicash is the UK's oldest health cash plan provider. It operates as a not-for-profit, reinvesting any surplus into its products and services. Medicash is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Since 2020, Medicash has been named Best Cash Plan Provider at the Corporate Adviser Awards for six consecutive years. In 2026, it was also named Best Corporate Health Cash Plan Provider at the HR & Employment Awards.
The starting point is choosing the right plan for your people. From there, the cover breaks down into what your people can claim back, the digital health tools available through the app, and an add-on that can change the cost equation if you already have PMI.
Medicash offers three employer plans, each designed for a different type of organisation. Most employers will find what they need in Medicash Proactive.
The other two exist for very large workforces that want a digital-first approach at minimum cost, and employers with requirements a standard plan can't accommodate.
Your people can claim back the cost of everyday health treatments, including dental, optical, physiotherapy, prescriptions, and diagnostic tests, up to the annual limit set by whichever coverage level you choose.
There are four levels, with higher levels offering more generous annual cashback limits. All Proactive plans include Medicash's full digital health platform. Plans start from £4.65 per employee per month.
Rather than cashback on treatments, your people get access to a suite of on-demand digital health tools: virtual physiotherapy, skin cancer screening, menopause support, neurodevelopment pathways, hearing health checks, and more.
At £1.95 per employee per month, it's built for large employers who want to offer a substantive health benefit at the lowest cost per head.
If you want to mirror a previous provider's benefit structure, set specific cashback limits to match a precise budget, or configure a plan around an unusual workforce profile, Bespoke gives you that flexibility. Pricing is agreed directly with Medicash.
For most employers evaluating Medicash, Proactive is where the conversation starts, so we’ll outline what your employees can actually claim from the plan.
Proactive benefit categories break down into a few distinct layers, and understanding them helps you see where the plan earns its keep.
This is the category that edges a cash plan toward PMI territory. If someone needs an MRI to rule something out, or wants a specialist opinion without waiting, this is what makes it possible without a PMI policy.
Here’s the full breakdown by level:
To claim, your people pay upfront for their health treatment as normal, then submit a photo of their receipt through the My Medicash app. Medicash pays the reimbursement directly into their bank account, typically within five working days.
All of the digital benefits are accessed through the My Medicash app, the same place your people submit claims. The digital toolkit includes:
Three tools were added in 2026, each addressing an area of growing workforce relevance:
If you already offer group PMI, Medicash's PMI excess cover can make a cash plan more compelling, particularly if you're trying to balance the cost of private medical insurance with the level of cover you offer.
Many PMI policies allow employees to choose a voluntary excess in return for a lower premium. The trade-off is that your people pay that excess when they make a claim.
With Medicash's PMI Excess Cover add-on, the cash plan can cover that cost instead. Medicash can either reimburse the employee or settle the excess directly with the PMI provider. Three levels are available: £100, £200, and £250.
Depending on your existing PMI premiums, introducing a voluntary excess could reduce your insurance costs enough to offset some, or in some cases most, of the cost of adding a Medicash cash plan.
That means your people could benefit from both everyday healthcare cashback and private medical insurance, without having to pay the excess themselves when they claim.
A health cash plan and private medical insurance solve different problems, so the decision isn't always about choosing one over the other.
Private medical insurance (PMI) is there when your people need treatment for an acute condition. It covers things like specialist consultations, hospital treatment, and eligible procedures, helping your people access care more quickly than they typically would through the NHS.
A health cash plan focuses on everyday healthcare costs. It reimburses everyday costs like dental treatment, eye care, physiotherapy, prescriptions, and other routine health expenses that would otherwise come out of your people’s pockets. There's no medical underwriting, and for most benefits, employees can start claiming as soon as they're covered.
That's why many employers see the two as complementary rather than competing benefits. PMI provides cover for more serious medical needs, while a cash plan helps with the routine healthcare costs your people are far more likely to incur.
Medicash's PMI Excess Cover reinforces that relationship, covering the excess on an employee's PMI claim so both benefits work as one.
The Proactive plan starts from £4.65 per employee per month for teams of 100 or more, rising to £5.00 for 25–99 employees and £5.75 for 10–24 employees, all at Level 1. The digital-only Remedi plan, available to organisations with 500 or more employees, starts from £1.95 per employee per month.
Four factors determine what you'll pay:
Cost is only one side of the equation. The other is whether the plan earns its premium. There's a reasonable case that it can.
A plan that gets people to a dentist sooner, a physio earlier, or a GP without waiting has the potential to reduce short-term absence. That argument has become more compelling since April 2026, when the Employment Rights Act 2025 introduced Day-One Statutory Sick Pay.
One final consideration is tax. Employer-paid health cash plan premiums are treated as a benefit in kind, so you'll need to report them on employees' P11Ds and pay Class 1A National Insurance. Employees, in turn, pay income tax on the value of the premium.
In practice, most employers absorb this into the total cost of the benefit and communicate it to employees alongside the cashback limits.
Medicash holds a 4.6 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot, based on 6,571 reviews. Around 88% of reviewers award five stars.
Claims speed is the most consistent theme in five-star reviews. Reviewers regularly describe reimbursements arriving within 24 hours to a few days of submitting a receipt through the My Medicash app.
The app itself draws consistent praise, with one reviewer describing her experience with Medicash:
Another reviewer commented on Medicash’s suitability for small businesses:
HR professionals who manage the plan cite a straightforward employer portal, and reviewers consistently describe customer service calls as picked up quickly by polite, helpful staff.
The pattern in one-star reviews is almost always documentation-related rather than a dispute over the benefit itself. Several reviewers describe claims declined because a receipt lacked required information, or because a referral came from a physiotherapist rather than a GP.
A smaller number mention having to resubmit claims or chase responses on more complex cases.
Here’s how Medicash stacks up against other health cash plan providers across the market:
The right plan depends on where you are with your benefits stack. Consider Medicash if:
That said, Medicash isn't the right fit for every situation. Consider alternatives if:
Whether you choose Medicash or another provider, someone still needs to manage enrolment, renewals, employee usage, and mid-year changes once it goes live, often alongside your other workplace benefits. As your benefits package grows, so does the challenge of managing everything across different providers and systems. That's where Kota comes in.
Kota brings your health cash plan together with the rest of your employee benefits in one platform, so you can compare providers, manage cover, and give your people a single place to access everything. With Kota, you can:
Book a free benefits review to see how Kota manages your health cash plan alongside your other benefits.
Yes. When you pay for a health cash plan on behalf of your people, HMRC treats the premium as a benefit in kind. Your people pay income tax on the value of the premium at their marginal rate. For you as the employer, the premiums are deductible against corporation tax, but you'll pay Class 1A National Insurance Contributions on the value of the benefit.
Medicash's corporate health cash plans require a minimum of 10 employees. If your team is smaller than that, you'll need to look at other options for employer-funded cover, although employees can still take out a personal Medicash plan themselves. For teams of 10 or more, Proactive plans start from £4.65 per employee per month.
For most everyday benefits, your people can claim from the date their cover starts. A few specific benefits have waiting periods. The birth and adoption benefit is not payable within the first 12 months of the policy, and pre-existing conditions are excluded from hospital benefit for three years from the start of the policy. Claims for any benefit are only processed once the first premium has been received.
Yes. PMI and a health cash plan serve different purposes. PMI covers acute conditions and serious treatment; a cash plan covers the everyday healthcare costs your people deal with regularly. There's no overlap, so they work well together.
If you already offer PMI with a voluntary excess, Medicash includes cover for that excess as part of the plan, up to £250 per claim. This means your people aren't paying out of pocket when they do need to use their PMI.
Cover ends at 23:59 on the date the employee is removed from the policy. It's your responsibility as the employer to notify Medicash when someone leaves; until you do, they remain on your policy and you continue to pay for their cover.
Senior benefits consultant at Kota, bringing 25+ years of experience working in employee insurance benefits.
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