If you take out comprehensive, worldwide health insurance with Britain's second mightiest medical insurers, PPP healthcare - started as long ago as 1938 - you'll be covered for vital medical treatment, right? In the words of a PPP circular sent to me recently, you'll know you're "in safe hands come what may", right? You can rely totally on a company now headed by caring, compassionate, brilliant maths graduate Peter Owen - a man so caring that he even provides a "stress room" for his employees at their Tunbridge Wells headquarters - to be run with integrity and competence, right?

Wrong, I'm afraid. Last month I wrote about how I had flu, but decided not to go to my doctor here because I knew from experience that it would involve too much hassle; my insurance company, I said, "moves the goalposts continually - and at its own behest". This week, following correspondence that started with a letter to the aforesaid Mr Owen, I've decided to out my insurance company. Yes, it's PPP, and I pay them several hundred pounds a month to provide my family with medical insurance here.

Or so I thought. Last July I wrote a detailed letter to Owen about the sloppy way his company - sold to Guardian Royal Exchange last year for £435 million - is being run in the US. I did not hear from the great man himself but from Rosemary Law, "Executive Secretary to the Group Chief Executive". She, in turn, passed my letter to Brenda Klug, "Customer Service Director", who tried to explain why the PPP healthcare forms I received did not include my correct US social security number, nor my correct PPP membership number; and why PPP managed not only to spell my doctor's name wrongly, but even that of its own claims examiner, Irene Keithan (or rather, "Keitman").

Ms Klug, though, assured me that I was "covered for any conditions which have arisen since first joining PPP healthcare" (in my case, January 1987) - and that, when I return to live in Britain, such blanket coverage will remain unchanged. But she simultaneously slipped in a more worrying sentence: "We are unable to cover non-surgical treatment of condition [sic] which does not respond quickly to treatment or which recurs."

Ms Klug clearly seemed to be saying that should a PPP comprehensive policyholder be struck down by one of those nightmare illnesses that are precisely the reason those of us who travel and live temporarily abroad take out medical insurance in the first place - why, we could forget being in the safe hands of PPP unless there was some quick cure. Poor Irene Keithan, Ms Klug added, "has left the company" and "been replaced by Francine Lewicki who has many years of customer service experience".

I therefore waited for Ms Lewicki's first communication with much anticipation. And waited. And waited. A bedraggled envelope with my name and address scrawled on it arrived last week together with a letter from Ms Lewicki dated 14 October. Then I saw why: Ms Lewicki had sent the letter to the wrong address.

What followed, though, was even more disturbing. It so happened that in 1989 I did have one of those nightmares, requiring open heart surgery and the insertion of an artificial aortic valve; cardiologists agree that if you have an artificial heart valve it's medically vital to take a daily high dose of blood-thinning warfarin to lessen the risk of blood clots (which otherwise can happen, often fatally), and then to have regular blood tests to make sure that the blood does not become too thin (which also happens, sometimes fatally). It's actually a simple process - and, as I subsequently discovered, my cardiologist had put in writing to Ms Lewicki, a "necessary" one for me.

"Following heart surgery we do pay benefits for up to ten years," Lewicki nonetheless wrote in the letter that finally reached me. "However, continuing paying for this follow-up is not eligible under the terms of your policy . . . we will therefore be unable to pay benefit for periodic cardiovascular evaluations, monthly prothrombin times and tests for the purpose of monitoring after 31 December 1998." Never mind that my life literally depends on that treatment. And so much for the "safe hands come what may" of the PPP healthcare run by Mr Owen and GRE.

I could find no rule, anywhere, that PPP paid only for ten years of treatment following heart surgery. In any case, Ms Lewicki promptly broke this "rule" by announcing that she will cut off payment before my ten years actually expire. "In fairness to all members," she wrote, "we must ensure that claims are paid in accordance with the membership agreement." The implicit assumption that, if I received benefits, other PPP policyholders would not get their due - that there is a limited pie of funds to go round - is a concept which, if applied, has repeatedly been found by US courts to be unlawful practice.

So, after next month, what do I do for medical treatment that cardiologists on both sides of the Atlantic say is necessary for my survival? By refusing to pay for the health treatment which I took for granted they would cover, PPP is in a position where, if my health deteriorates as a result of being denied this treatment and (God forbid) I need heart surgery again, they would have to fork out for that, which might well set them back $100,000 or more. Penny wise, pound foolish?

Now I know how the 40 million Americans who have no health insurance feel; mine is ineffectual when it comes to the condition that matters most to me, to say the least. I wonder, now I have outed them, whether PPP healthcare will be shamed into taking action over the shambles in the US? Perhaps the caring and compassionate Mr Owen will now address these concerns personally. If he does, I hope he gets my address right.

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