Health insurance - cant make sense of it

[Antheia]

I'm looking at getting PHI but i everytime i read about it i still cant make sense on how it works.

For eg. on the MBF website it says for general dental its a limit of $300/yr. What does this mean exactly? I take it to mean i can only claim back $300 in any given year. But what i wanna know is, everytime i went to the dentist would i get something back until i have reached the $300 mark? How much would i get back at each visit? It is a percentage? Dentists cost like $150 a visit so it'd be easy to reach $300 and if thats the case i cant see any worth in it? Especially for Chiropractic its a limit of $200 and it costs me $50 a fortnight, so if i cant only get $200 back thats only a few visits per year.

[briggsy's girl]

this is one that is close to my heart cos i've just hit my limit for chiro!


what happens is they have a maximum rebate - it would be something like $17 per visit - so you'd get rebates for maybe 14 visits a year with your $200 limit. to be honest though, $200 is a pathetically small limit!

i am with Latrobe - on my current extras plan, for around $33 a fortnight for DH and I - we get up to $800 chiro per year - a maximum of $450 per person at $17 per visit i was able to go once a fortnight for chiro and get rebate each time (i used accupuncture as well, which came into limit - so it ran out sooner!). we get 180 per year optical (glasses) each, and 50 for sunnies. we get $600 dental, $600 majoy dental and an amount towards braces each year. cover includes ambulance, midwifery (which i need to contact them about - i think it's home visits after birth but not sure), orthotics, prosthetics etc

look around heaps hun!

[Kazbah]

Each of the providers has a set $$$ amount for a service. Now with medical stuff, its determined by the medicare set fee, but with dental, chiropractic etc there's no set price, so each fund has its own refund amount.

With MBF, the dental rebate (I think from memory?) starts at a lower percentage of the cost and then increases per visit - thus encouraging you to go to the dentist every year / 6 months etc.

Its also worth looking at family vs couples cover - waiting periods and the like. As you're already preggers, then the usual waiting period of a year wouldn't give you any favours with this pregnancy, but will kick in. It's worth looking at various PHI for deals on waiting periods etc.

Also ask around at your or your DH's work - defense health is great, cheap with high rebates. And you don't have to be in the defense forces, even contractors for defence forces (or the governments) are eligible.

hth