Private health funds

[pegasus]

I did look there and the min was $125 a month and they only search a limited number of funds. I was searching the federal government's private health search engine and the more lax the parameters the more fund covers I find. I found at least 75 different policies and I did not want to search them all. Perhaps if we did a sort of poll on BB to find out what sort of funds families are on, it could help me in the right direction.

Currently I'm with NIB Basic Saver, that's $19.90 a fortnight, and my DD is not covered by anything. I really want her covered.

[SJmumof2]

Getting private health insurance was the best thing i ever did. It gives you peace of mind that if something terrible was to happen you would have the best doctors looking after your family, not trainee doctors.
When we found out zak needed tubes in his ears and his tonsils out he was booked in for the surgery the following week. If we didnt have private he would have gone on a 8 months public waiting list. which would have meant that he would have been sick for those 8 months waiting.
We are with mutual community. It is expensive but the health and care of your family is the most important thing

[Kitt3n]

hi there,

I was like you - before DF and I were "committed" i just couldnt afford the premiums as a single parent - from what i found, it didnt matter if you were 1 parent and 1 child, or 2 parents with 2 children, the premums were pretty much the same!

But now that we have it no matter what i have to do i will do my best to keep it - we have certainly gotten more out of it than i would have expected!

We are with NIB.

[mrsmac]

I was with medibank private which was $110 per fortnight but we had full extras etc as well. We have since moved to a teachers one which is the same cost but no extra to apy if we go into hospital. I looked up iselect once but they only do a few funds which annoyed me. You really need to work out what you want to cover- do you need extras like dental and optical etc?

[Trillian]

I have no idea how much ours costs us because Dh gets it paid for by his employer as a fringe benefit, and its a corporate fund so its cheaper than if we did it ourselves. What I can recommend though is find a fund that will let you pick and choose the type of things you want to be covered for (I think most of them do that these days anyway) becuase obviously there are things that you wont need. Also try calling them direct - you might be able to wrangle a cheaper premium that way instead of going by what you see online.

[Olive]

we have just basic hospital cover and it costs us $65 a month for the family

[pegasus]

I've just signed up with HBA. Its going to cost me about $140 a month, and I also get 1 month free. It was about the same for HCF, but I kinda like the choice of extras better with HBA.

I wanted dental and optical. I get to choose four extras, so I chose general dental, major dental, optical and natural therapies (which include naturopathy-sp?, remedial massage, acupuncture etc). Its going to be great to get a massage again. And I really need dental and optical. DD is likely to need glasses as both her parents do.

Thanks for helping me out!