Interesting thread, and having quite a few extended family in the health industry in various capacities, an issue that I've discussed and researched at great length.
What do we do? We have the absolute minimum private health hospital cover only that we need to avoid the Medicare surcharge, and use
iselect every time we renew, to check that we have the optimal policy. The fact that it's cheaper to have hospital cover than to pay the surcharge makes it an easy decision, but I think we'd have hospital cover even without 30% rebate or surcharge considerations.
The determinant for me is waiting time for "elective" surgery. You'd be amazed how uncomfortable you can be, and still have the surgery classified as "elective". Basically, if it's not going to kill you, just hurt a lot and reduce your quality of life, then it's elective. If I need a hip replacement, cornea transplant, etc, I want to know that I can have it performed in a timely manner. Hubby works as a contractor, and doesn't get paid unless he's working. He may have a health problem arise that prevents him from working, yet is still classified as "elective". Waiting for that public hospital waiting list would then be very expensive... a few months of lost wages would pay for decades of hospital coverage.
Ouch! He has income protection insurance, but I can imagine there are loads of conditions that would be severe enough to keep him from working, but not severe enough to trigger his income protection insurance
I agree that the public health system is perfectly adequate; in some instances, such as birthing services, I think it's superior to the private system. It is, however, outrageous that a private patient can pay more than a public patient for the same services.
We've had "extras" cover in the past, but after several years of self-insuring, I don't think I'd consider extras cover again. I can't imagine a scenario under which it's worthwhile, even if you're a heavy user of allied health practitioners. When we go to the dentist (or optometrist, or physio), they ask if we have private health cover. I say no, and that seems to attract about a 30% discount. (If I had insurance, yes, that would really **** me off!) Combine that with the fact that you generally only get a pretty small portion of the bill back anyway (if you do have insurance), and I think you pay about the same whether you have insurance or not. Having the insurance just seems to allow the service providers to charge more!
But I'm open to being persuaded that I'm mistaken; perhaps there could be good arguments for "extras" that I haven't considered.
[As an aside, we feel somewhat obliged to keep our hospital cover... our twin sons were born nearly 10 weeks premie, and were two of our health fund's top 10 claimants in the year they were born, at $400K and $440K ...
Combine that with our recent flood - total bill looks like it'll be $180-200K - and we're certainly ahead on insurances...
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