Is health insurance worthwhile?
- Thread starter cimbom
- Start date
I suspect that some broken bones become life threatening if they are left untreated for a while though.
Yes and they are completely covered by the public health system....
That is precisely the point. Private health cover often offers very little or nothing above the public system, for many non-life threatening medical issues, including many elective procedures.
I was told by a Nurse, anything serious is covered. It is when you start to fall apart like knees etc that is a wait.
Personally, our experience is: wife had our daughter in RPA Sydney which is massive public hospital. Albeit on of the best for babies in Sydney.
Brand new wing, room to our self, all tests, meals, accommodation for me but no meals (dads can sleep in a pull out with mum and bub) 6 day stay, pre and post natal cost us ......$80. The price for parking a week in the carpark.
And on a serious note, the service was literally, phenomenal. I still tear up when I remember how it went.
Wife wanted a all natural, no drugs, in the spa bath, meditation birthing suite which they have (again free). But Daughter keep moving her heart rate around ( high and low). So nurse said "lets try a few tests with machines in a room".
Wheelchaired Wife across the hall to standard room (again us only) and hooked Wife up to more substantial machine. Then, without any panic, she quietly said, I might get some help......I still don't know which button she pushed but within 30 seconds we have a doctor and three other nurses surrounding Wife and plugging here in to everything that made a "bing". 12 hr later after trying everything else natural to budge Daughter out, Wife had cesear.
And get this, just as we were to do it, a real emergency came in, and the doctor, female has to put Anne on hold 15 minutes. NO issue shtough, all good.
However the Doctor came in at the end of her shift, looking stuffed and with blood here and there from the day and apologized profusely for making Wife wait , whilst she saved a lady and babies life.
True Story.
Peter 14.7
If that's the case they get treated well beforehand.
Often people have longer waits for things like knee replacement because it's in their best interest not to start having them too young.
You don't have them at the first sign of knee problems either (you would normally wait till it's absolutely necessary), and I imagine some people wouldn't understand this, and think the doctor doesn't think they're so urgent.
Infact a friend who went private went about 3 years over what she would have wanted on the medical advice of her 'private' doctor. She spent the last year on analgesia to sleep on nights after days where she spent too long on her feet, and limped, but still waited on his advice (she's a 4 day a week nurse at an admissions desk of a hospital).
Sometimes there are reasons to these very long waits. Generally people don't wait anywhere near years for surgery - some are media scare stories or people diagnosing themselves.
Posted a link of the MyHospitals site - please take a look at wait times.
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Hubby has two life insurances (being primary income earner) - one thru his super and one private.
The super one is willed to his adult children - and that is all they get from him. The other is for myself and junior, just in case.
Easy to say the portfolio is the insurance - but currently the rents cover the mortgage/expenses with nothing over. In another 5 years it will be throwing off money, but not right now.
So, if something happened to him on the way home from work tonight I'd either have to go out and get a full time job or sell a few of the IP's in a damn hurry - at the worst of emotional times for junior and I - or we know we are covered by his insurance whilst we get the financial house in order.
He has plenty of super but we couldn't access that for a good number of years - being nearly 10 years younger.
Personally I think it rather essential until such a time that the portfolio is throwing off enough.
I've just got the bare minimum to avoid the extra tax.
I used to have extras cover. Went through all the hoops to claim the one and only $70 thing I tried in my years of membership and it was knocked back because the receipt was 'ineligible'. It was partially faded but you could still read it (I think we all know those useless thermal paper receipts).
I then dropped the extras.
The real benefit of private is to fast track non-life threatening problems.
I used to have extras cover. Went through all the hoops to claim the one and only $70 thing I tried in my years of membership and it was knocked back because the receipt was 'ineligible'. It was partially faded but you could still read it (I think we all know those useless thermal paper receipts).
I then dropped the extras.
The real benefit of private is to fast track non-life threatening problems.
If you value your life and the lives of your loved ones, you need private insurance.
Having private insurance is like driving your own private car rather than waiting for the public bus at a bus-stop with many strangers.
Without private insurance, you are at the mercy of the public health system.
Anyone can operate on you, often trainee doctors. You are on some endless waiting list. Your surgery gets postponed if an emergency comes in. You often share rooms with drunks, the psychotic and the filthy people who come off the streets. The public hospital staff has no need to be nice to you as you are an inconvenience to them whilst private hospital staff should be nice to you as they are part of a profit making organisation and you are the customer.
Public patients are often treated as the great unwashed by doctors, often they will maintain a facade of egalitarianism. If a surgeon performs an operation on a private patient, he gets three times as much as when doing the same operation on a public patient.
So ultimately, you get what you pay for. Pay nothing, expect to get nothing.
Many studies have confirmed that privately insured patients have longer life expectancies than the non-insured.
Having private insurance is like driving your own private car rather than waiting for the public bus at a bus-stop with many strangers.
Without private insurance, you are at the mercy of the public health system.
Anyone can operate on you, often trainee doctors. You are on some endless waiting list. Your surgery gets postponed if an emergency comes in. You often share rooms with drunks, the psychotic and the filthy people who come off the streets. The public hospital staff has no need to be nice to you as you are an inconvenience to them whilst private hospital staff should be nice to you as they are part of a profit making organisation and you are the customer.
Public patients are often treated as the great unwashed by doctors, often they will maintain a facade of egalitarianism. If a surgeon performs an operation on a private patient, he gets three times as much as when doing the same operation on a public patient.
So ultimately, you get what you pay for. Pay nothing, expect to get nothing.
Many studies have confirmed that privately insured patients have longer life expectancies than the non-insured.
My understanding is that if your hubby dies, you can access his super immediately. You dont have to wait....
In fact, if you have a terminal illness, and less than 6 or 12 months to live, you can usually access both super and life insurance.
I do have private health insurance, but I dont think your view of the public health system is very accurate. I have had generally positive experiences in the public system. I never felt like an "inconvenience"... and was always treated with compassion.
There are plenty of reasons to have private health insurance, but I have not seen any of the staff behaviour that you have outlined in Australian hospitals.
I think that you have been quite lucky if you have had a good experience in public hospitals. However, as a general principle, if you are not the direct payer of a service, you cannot expect to have good treatment. Look at our emergency departments - six hour waits, people lying in corridors and on trolleys. Look at our public hospital wards, often six people to a ward - men and women mixed in together. So again, I say you get what you pay for. Private insurance is clearly value for money if your life is important to you. Why depend on a public health system that is clearly deficient.
Umm, the compulsory third party insurance covers injury to people when a vehicle is involved in an accident, so what you have written doesn't make sense.
As far as overcrowding in hospital emergency departments, most of the time it's to do with insufficient beds in the wards. A lot of the beds, whole wards in fact, are taken up by elderly folk on waiting lists for aged care placements.
I've been to ED's at Hornsby, Westmead and Ryde with my mother when she was alive. She was always seen promptly and treated with dignity, despite being difficult to manage as a result of dementia.
I've also paid to go to Norwest Private hospital emergency. The level of treatment and time waiting for scans etc was very similar.
I spent 10 days in Westmead Hospital (public) last year, in a 4 bed ward. there were men and women in together, on rare occassions, but it didnt cause any problems. Sure, the private hospitals are more pleasant to stay in.. but I couldnt have the treatment that I did in a private hospital. I could think of better places to spend 10 days, but the treatment that I received was excellent.
I wonder if you are believing too much of the hype from Today Tonight and A Current Affair, rather than actual experience. I think overall both our private and public hospitals offer a reasonably high standard, but have different purposes.
I have private insurance.
I have an excellent local GP who gives me annual check-ups. One of these revealed a higher than normal antibody count on the liver function test. The GP got me an appointment with a Liver specialist the following day.
I needed to have an MRI, which I had in 2 days, had I gone through the public system the wait was 3 months.
I then had to go in to hospital for a biopsy, I was in a private hospital in 2 days. Again wait at public hospital was months.
The outcome was, within 2 weeks of discovering the problem I was on medication to control the problem. Had I waited I would have had to have a liver transplant.
I believe the money I have spent on private insurance has paid me back.
I do not consider my problem to be "elective" surgery but I would still have had to wait 3 months.
Chris
I have an excellent local GP who gives me annual check-ups. One of these revealed a higher than normal antibody count on the liver function test. The GP got me an appointment with a Liver specialist the following day.
I needed to have an MRI, which I had in 2 days, had I gone through the public system the wait was 3 months.
I then had to go in to hospital for a biopsy, I was in a private hospital in 2 days. Again wait at public hospital was months.
The outcome was, within 2 weeks of discovering the problem I was on medication to control the problem. Had I waited I would have had to have a liver transplant.
I believe the money I have spent on private insurance has paid me back.
I do not consider my problem to be "elective" surgery but I would still have had to wait 3 months.
Chris
True there are elderly waiting for beds at all times, but waiting in corridors is not that common, and nor is waiting many hours AFTER the decision is made to admit.
Last few times I was in the ER there were between 10% and 50% (yep 50%)of cubicles empty, so if any were waiting for beds they were not in the corridors.
Friday and Saturday night after midnight CAN be busy (but not always) and so can certain peak periods like winter. Many of the winter patients are 'coughs and cold' - a term used by medical/nursing staff for people that need to see their doctor outside of the ER - who watch everyone bypass them for treatment
.Most of the long wait in ER is due to having to do various tests, waiting on results, waiting on a specific consultant to arrive, etc. All this can take hours and has nothing to do with bad service.
If you're an emergency you get seen within minutes, and as a Cat 1, immediately.
In regards to childbirth and children I personally pick public over private for those, just in case anything goes wrong. I would want the best facilities that could deal with high risk and emergencies.
Whatever you think public ER is, it's still the safest place to be when you're very sick. When you are not high risk or an emergency both systems provide equal medical care.
I've worked in both and I can't say I treated private patients better.
True there are elderly waiting for beds at all times, but waiting in corridors is not that common, and nor is waiting many hours AFTER the decision is made to admit.
Last few times I was in the ER there were between 10% and 50% (yep 50%)of cubicles empty, so if any were waiting for beds they were not in the corridors.
Friday and Saturday night after midnight CAN be busy (but not always) and so can certain peak periods like winter. Many of the winter patients are 'coughs and cold' - a term used by medical/nursing staff for people that need to see their doctor outside of the ER - who watch everyone bypass them for treatment
Most of the long wait in ER is due to having to do various tests, waiting on results, waiting on a specific consultant to arrive, etc. All this can take hours and has nothing to do with bad service.
If you're an emergency you get seen within minutes, and as a Cat 1, immediately.
In regards to childbirth and children I personally pick public over private for those, just in case anything goes wrong. I would want the best facilities that could deal with high risk and emergencies.
Whatever you think public ER is, it's still the safest place to be when you're very sick. When you are not high risk or an emergency both systems provide equal medical care.
I've worked in both and I can't say I treated private patients better.
I can't figure where you stand, Weg. Is having private health insurance recommended by you, or is it a waste of time?
