Private Health Insurance for baby

[LeslieSmith]

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?

Any advice would be great.

Thanks,

[Rach75]

if you have family health cover bub is automatically added then you have 6 weeks to provide details etc I beleive

[amberj]

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!

[~Kim~]

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.

[LeslieSmith]

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?

[tenar]

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.