Private health-any one cancelled/cut back on it?

[briggsy's girl]

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

[Bathsheba]

That really is a brilliant example of why PHI should be kept above non-essentials BG! I have heard of too many people in real pain on public waiting lists that seem to go on forever. And yes I think it is 2% per year added to your premiums once you are over 30... I wonder if it's capped! Because that would mean for me alone (being 40) that would mean an extra 20%!!! (ontop of what we already pay). It's so true that sometimes you actually have to go through a situation like yours to appreciate the service too. When I was 10 years younger and healthy... I wondered if we really needed it... it was really only for when I fell pregnant (wanted to go private the second time around) that we started with PHI at all. But now I don't think I could sleep at night if we didn't have it and had to rely on the public system. It's not that I don't trust the public system... it's great in an emergency... but no one can deny it over stretched.

[Doing my best]

We haven't dropped it even though things are tight..

I need to get my wisdom teeth removed (thankfully they are not painful, but they are there and decaying), so seeing that I am pg, I am choosing to hold off just a little longer before getting them removed. I prefer to have procedures done when things suit my family, not when it suits the system..

[rubibaby]

we haven't dropped it...
we are with Private health insurance | HCF...
i really like knowing that we have cover and if something was to happen, we would be covered and not put on a waiting list...it is peace of mind!