I'm going to be dropping extras down very shortly (i'm on intermediate cover) - once I've got my latest glasses & contacts and dental - I'm going to talk to my accountant and work out if it is better off financially for me to drop hospital cover and just pay the penalty or keep it for the tax break.
We decided to keep ours through thick and thin. Past experience taught us that things always go wrong when least you can afford it. The more kids we have the more it is worth it for us. Soon all 5 of us will be going to the dentist twice a year. I am worried that we actually don't have enough cover... if I need root canal therapy for instance (and you don't get much warning about that very expensive treatment) we are not currently covered... DH needed it once and set us back over a $1000 out of pocket. We can't afford for that to happen again. Maybe if dental was covered by Medicare it would be different... also DH's Medicare levy would be too high now if we didn't have it.
We just have ours taken out by direct debit and try not to think about it. There are other things we'd cut back, like possibly stopping having a landline telephone before cutting our PHC. They are a similar amount per month.
ETA: Forgot to add that because we have had PHC ever since before we turned 30 we have both avoided the added surcharge to our premiums... DH is 43 now... and I am 40 that would an extra amount we would have to pay if we cut it out.
Last edited by Bathsheba; August 18th, 2009 at 01:34 PM.
I was thinking of cutting back but then DH's work allows us to get it at corporate price and it worked out cheaper upgrading to top cover of both hospital and extras then to keep what we had!! Weird I know.
I read this yesterday and remember thinking "Nah, I really don't need it"
Two hours later I'm lying on the side of the road, drifting in and out of consciousness, waiting for an ambulance after a big bike accident. As it turned out, I ended up at a public hospy anyway, because their A & E had the least queue, but it made me wonder....
We're not covered for accidents (well we are but we wouldn't go private for an accident)... like you said, you won't be refused instant treatment in an emergency. It's more to insure us against non-emergency health issues... like root canal treatment! You also hear of people who could have had earlier life saving cancer treatment etc. I just don't want to see any of us on public hospital waiting lists.
Thanks, Bath, I'm OK, but maybe writing some junk posts because I'm junked up on painkillers And laughing at everything - I was laughing while I was on the spinal board too, I felt so bad, but I couldn't help it.
ETA - I have top extras, for dental etc (first thing I thought of when I hit my chin on landing!)
i thought about it, then realised it's money well spent when i look at what happened to us 2 years ago. DH had to have major dental surgery. he waited a month for initial visit to the surgeon, and another month for the surgery - would have been only 2 weeks but we had concert tix the next day - we decided to put it off! no cost for hospital/anaesthetist. small out of pocket for actual surgeon
in the same 12 months, i had to have major dental surgery as well (yeah, we're jinxed!) - after trying to fix the dramas with root canal therapy (which we were covered for) and realising it was more than could be fixed in the chair, i was sent to a surgeon - scan that day showed i had a cyst that had gotten so big as to eat away more than a third of my cheek bone. i was in surgery within 3 weeks (would have been sooner but the surgeon planned the surgery to be at the hospital closest to home as i had to travel) - $50 co payment, no our of pocket for hospital anaesthetist, small out of pocket for the surgeon
when i looked at our statement on the PHI website at the end of that financial year, i found that we'd saved over $13k just from those two surgeries and associated appointments. no real waiting either...
if i were to drop anything, it would only be the level of cover, not the cover itself. for one, if you're out of hospital cover more than 12 months and you're over 30, you start paying the higher rate (i think it's an extra 2% for each year over 30 or something like that). i also won't drop extras - i get too much value considering what we pay (although if we were really struggling, i'd drop it short term)
i think i'd rather give other non-essential things the flick - home phone like Bath mentioned (only keep mobiles cos DH and I can talk for nothing), ummm, pay TV, drop internet to minimum. it might seem like a wasted expense at the moment if you're not actively using it - but it is something i wouldn't part with. had we not had PHI for those two lots of surgery, we would have had to pay the costs to the private hospital or join a public waiting list to find a surgeon who would do the surgery as a public patient. the pain i was in (constant headache, sinuses squashed, the bone in my face deteriorating daily) - i just couldn't have waited - and i don't know how we'd have come up with the money for the op - where the 200 or whatever each month is no biggie at all
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And laughing at everything - I was laughing while I was on the spinal board too, I felt so bad, but I couldn't help it.
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