Car Insurance Guide, Motor Insurance

Furthermore, the NHS can now claim treatment costs (including ambulance callout costs) from insurance companies.
 If you are the at-fault party in an accident, your insurer will have to pick up the bill for any NHS treatment the other party requires (and vice-versa, of course), and you might be surprised by just how large NHS bills can be.

Of course, simply by purchasing car insurance you are helping to keep premiums down. Research indicates that between 5 and 10% of UK motorists drive without insurance for some part of the year (in some cases this is simply a few days while switching providers), and if you are involved in an accident with an uninsured driver your insurer will likely take the brunt of the cost.

This problem adds around £30 to every insured driver's premium per year, which creates somewhat of a loop: As insurance gets more and more expensive, more people choose to drive without it, meaning more unnecessary costs for the companies, resulting in premiums increasing further - and then the cycle begins again.

Insurers also invest a lot of money gained from premiums in order to pay out when claims are made. Of course, when the stock market or global economy is unstable or otherwise sinking, investment returns are far lower, and this means the insurance companies

 have to find another way to bolster their income - and do so by raising premiums. While this is more obvious in the home insurance industry (Where freak weather can lead to high numbers of expensive claims), it also affects the car insurance industry.