Lifetime health Cover?

I just received a letter about LHC (lifetime health cover) Since I am now 31 years of age I have until July 1st to get private health. (I'm assuming this is what it all means) I don't have PHI and wasn't intending on getting it either. Quite frankly I just can't afford something like PHI and even if I had have taken it out when I was younger, I don't think I would have actually used it yet anyway. So what happens if you can't afford it? You just get slugged with the extra 2% for every year that I wait? This sounds ridiculous to me. I am not impressed :angry:

Yes, this relates to hospital cover only - not "extras" from my understanding.

This explains it quite well http://www.privatehealth.gov.au/heal...ealthcover.htm

I received a letter about this today too. I have until June to sort it out. We are in no position to get PHI, so guess I'll just suffer the outcome

It's so unfair :( There is just no room for ANOTHER monthly direct debit in our household. :(

It's been like that for years so I don't really get why you're upset about it :dunno: if you can't afford it don't get it.

Dh got this letter today, even though we have cover. We get ours taken out fornightly and I think just hospital cover costs our family about 40-50 a month, it's the extras that are costly.
The reason why I will try to never drop it is because of how expensive an accident can be, and that's just looking at the ambo costs, let alone any other treatment.

I'll never drop ours either, we only have basic cover, a few years ago we claimed over 11k for admissions/operations, had we not had it we would have had to wait for public or pay $$$ out of pocket

While it would be nice, we just can't afford it right now. I was under the impression it would only affect us if we earnt over $150K (pfft, we wish) Or am I thinking of something different...

Oh and we have ambulance cover. $80 a year is reasonable.

Ambulance cover was a must for us.
I was in a car accident a few years ago (along with 3 kids + another adult), 3 of us needed the ambulance, each received a $980 bill. TAC paid them all, but had we had to, at least cover would have saved us just under $3k

Yeah, especially now we have DD to consider. And thank goodness it's affordable :)