NO-HEADLINE

Private health insurers faced criticism from the Office of Fair Trading yesterday, which called for regulation of sales, warnings about future cost increases, and sales literature changed, so that rival schemes can be compared.

"The combination of medical matters and insurance makes these products doubly difficult to understand and almost impossible to compare," said John Bridgeman, director general of fair trading. "Even the well-educated will at present find it hard to make good judgements. Given that insurance is called on when people are vulnerable, this is not the time to discover that a mistake has been made."