I was wondering if anyone can help me out with whether or not I should register our baby with private health insurance. I am going through the public system, but have PHI for extras (dental etc, but not for obstretics in a private hospital).
Do you think babies should be insured for both PHI extra and hospital cover? Is Medicare suffice?
We only have extras under our PHI and have not upgraded this or specifically added DS to it as yet.
I am really in two minds about it. On the one hand, I have found the public system excellent for my own care, so I have been happy to go with it. But on the other hand, its a bit different with bubs- for example- Peter needs to see an opthamologist about a minor eye problem. Because we are public patients and the issue is not major, we will wait about 9 months to see them....in fact, I think our referral may have got lost in the system. I'm sure if matters were urgent, the care would be great. But for things that are not major/ urgent, but still need attention, you are waiting a loooooong time in the public system. Of course, that's the same for adults, but sometimes those more minor/ not urgent things are worse for kids than adults and happen more frequently for kids. So I am considering upgrading, but don't have the finances atm. I will watch this thread with interest to see what others think!
Are you on a single or family membership?
Like Rach said on a family membership you just have to provide details, but if you're on a single membership then I guess cost is a factor for weighing up.
Both our kids are on ours and TBH I've never used it for either. In fact we're going back to just ambulance cover soon as neither of us have used ours in over 3 years. That's not to say we're never going to but we're going to 'self insure' instead.
We are both on single cover. To change to a family cover would be $180 per month for hospital and extras. We need to decide if we want to upgrade to family cover, so that the bub is covered and if the extra money is worth it for peace of mind?
Maybe you could check out other insurers. I'm fairly sure that changing from 2 singles to 1 family cover didn't change our premiums, for us. Though maybe your situation is different to ours.
To compare to other insurers, I found the federal governments website very good - it made it really easy to compare and includes ALL insurers (as opposed to, argh, can't think of the name, the annoying adds with the puffing muffins chick, which only includes 6 insurers(. Just do a google and you should find it. Good luck.
Oh, and we have cover for our daughter. Mainly because it was no extra cost to add her to our plan and we have a history of eye problems that require surgery so I would prefer to go private for that as it is not an acute/emergency situation.
I work for a private health insurance company and add hundreds of babies too family and single covers all the time. I guess the biggest thing is if you can afford hosp cover. It is the most expensive part of health insurance and sometimes can be a complete waste of time and money if you don't really need it. (i know i'm not meant to say that).
If you want to take out hosp cover just for your baby it will cost the same as an adult having a single membership. If you add yourself and hubby to the cover then it usually costs approx double a single membership. The health fund I work for doesn't have an excess for children under 21 if they need to go into hosp. And you will have waiting periods of 12 months for any pre existing conditions. Even having private cover doesn't mean you are fully covered as your doctors can charge gaps above the benefit amount.
If you have a family history of conditions such as eye issues, make sure you make that known... Most covers may not include things like major eye surgery under the basic and intermediate covers. So you actually may need to go onto a top cover which will add another $50 - $80 a month to your premiums again.
We had PHI when and before DS was born, as two singles and upgraded to family hospital extras when he was born, because I was booked for an operation. We held onto it for a little while longer before downgrading to extras and ditching the hospy part. We figured that if he needed anything urgent he'd get seen to in the public system and so would we. Meanwhile, I was using Osteo and we justified the cost for a little while...before deciding that it still wasn't worth it for just extras - the amount we used on the services we were using still wasn't adding up to what we spent over 12 months!!
So, we just stuck with our ambo cover and ditched the PHI. Even with the osteo and acupuncture I've used through this pregnancy, I've saved on annual premium...considering we were getting a discount through emergency services!
we've had couple cover for ages and when DD was born, all i had to do was go online and add her name to the record - there was no change to premiums at all. we have both had eye and dental problems in the past so will maintain that side of it. we're on maximum hospital cover at the moment (for IVF purposes - plus we both had major surgeries recently) - we'll be dropping that soon if DH doesn't find a decent paying job! but we won't cancel it completely - just go to lower premium and pay an excess to go into provate hospital.
for anyone considering dropping the hospy side of it, don't forget that, once you hit 31 you pay more for each year over 30 you are (i think it's 2%), plus the medicare surcharge at tax time.
i wouldn't go without extras - with chiro/accupuncture during pregnancy, dental stuff and both DH and I having glasses (and potentially DD in the future) - i can't justify not having it - we definitely get back more than what we pay - and i don't notice cos it comes out fortnightly
Yep, BG, we made our call re: the rebate etc. We've got good coverage for our risk profiles through CFA, horseriding etc, and apart from that we are healthy individuals. Dentist once a year (twice tops) and osteo/massage/acupuncture cost us less than a premium minus the piddly refunds we were getting.
Had DS been born with any health issues, we may have kept it on.
I'm not advocating dropping it. Just advocating having a good think about it - the rebate penalty thing isn't the be all and end all, necessarily
definitely not something to use to make your decision on - i agree - i'd be leaning more towards the lifetime cover as being the important thing - you might know what your health is like now, but 10 or 15 years from now, you could have a completely different life/lifestyle/health issues - and having to pay additional on top of that cover based on the age you enter PHI - it can be a huge difference... even if you have the most basic hospital cover by the time you turn 30, it will keep you paying the premiums of a 30 year old for life... we're seeing the impact of this in that DH wasn't covered before he turned 30 so we pay extra for him....
couple of years ago we both had dental surgery and got over 13k of value just from those two ops - so i am still thinking we're ahead!
ooh, and DH's income has been in the region that applies to that higher medicare rebate more than once the last couple of years - what we've paid in PHI has pretty much been negated by what he would have had to pay for that... and we've gotten value for it
another thing to keep in mind, and i think this is something that does apply to some people - is what public services you have locally - we only really have two, maybe three, public hospitals within 100k's of here and the waiting lists are appalling (my mum had to wait over a year for surgery to correct multiple hernias that left her incapable of moving half the time due to the pain) - i understand why her and dad dropped PHI due to finance (she is on pension) - but it's made me more aware of the advantages of being able to access the local private hospital (which is closer than the others anyway!) with such a short wait time.
We were on couples cover and it was exactly the same premium when DD was added. Under our policy we can add up to nine children before premiums are affected.
DD was also covered I think from 6 mths gestation, ie, if she was born up to 3 mths early and needed treatment, private health insurance would cover her. You should check your singles cover too, if you haven't opted for it, obstetrics is probably not covered.
I doubt we're out that far ahead in terms of premiums (despite my expensive contact lenses, about $15K worth of dental and orthodontic work and our private ob and hosp, well, we might be), but TBH insurance is just that, insurance. It's there to protect you from future situations that might cost you a lot of money. Medical problems in our family, where we both work for ourselves, could otherwise cause a strain we wouldn't be able to bear. Waiting lists would not be a viable option and would cost far more than having PHI.
Yep, definitely check if you're wanting obstetrics cover. Mine didn't include any of the birthing options I was after, so being able to 'choose' an Ob from the hospital was not useful to me. You don't need PHI for birthing in a FBC, BTW (like what BG was saying about what services are nearby that you're gonna have access to). None of them cover homebirth anymore.
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