Comparing Private Health Insurance

By / / General / 4 minutes of reading

Private Health Insurance–

When it comes to health care and health care products, we consumers are often confused by all the options offered. Unfortunately, the health advice we’re given changes from day to day. What was essential one day, is regarded as harmful the next day. Just the other day, The Sydney Morning Herald contained a report saying that our current heart campaigns are a waste of time and do not work, and that the best way to reduce heart disease is to reduce the amount of salt in food and for doctors to prescribe heart medication “more aggressively”, even though it was previously thought correct to prescribe them much more moderately.

The same newspaper carried an article quoting research stating that nuts, even though high in fat and thus previously not included in “healthy” diets, are in fact very beneficial to the health of the heart. Possibly the biggest about-turn regarding health advice, is the opinion that chocolate is now good for you!

Australian Health Insurance Confusion

When it comes to health insurance, the current situation of the various products on the market is also confusing. You would be excused for wondering whether the three dozen or so insurers in the Australian market deliberately set out to make it difficult for us to select a health insurance package that will look after us as well as we would like, at a price we can afford.  Certainly we all need some additional form of health insurance, as Medicare itself does not cover the entire cost of the services we receive, and we need gap cover. In the 2010-11 year it was found that typically seeing a dentist for a quick examination and one filling would leave one with a gap of $81.20 to pay, and a consultation with a general practitioner around $32.10. Hospitalisation also incurs gap payments, and this can be scary, as the amounts involved can be huge.

If you look at just three of the many health insurers, for a start, such as HBF, Medibank and BUPA, you will see that each offers you around four basic hospital plans, onto which you can add extras in the way of maternity benefits, ambulance benefits, and more. There are strong similarities between the various levels offered by each insurer: each has a level 1 plan which provides fairly elementary cover, a more advanced (and more expensive) plan which will cover more expensive hospital care, a plan which will cover more conditions which will cost more to treat, and so on. But comparing health insurance options is not straightforward. It is not a linear increase in services. You may find that with one insurer, the basic plan could include some items such as colonoscopy, but their slightly more costly plan which provides better cover for most things, might exclude colonoscopy.

So the average person cannot just sit down for five minutes with a cup of coffee and compare different health insurance plans, making a quick choice taking his budget into account. He needs to review his and his family’s health status, take a good look at what their health needs might be over the next couple of years, and then make a considered decision.

In a country where the standard of health is generally good compared with other countries, and where health care is of a high quality as well, we must not become complacent. We Australians have to face the fact that we all face similar health risks to other developed countries.  If you consult the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare publications, you will see that we are beset by the risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and kidney failure.

So, even though to compare health insurance options is a daunting task, as confusing as what health advice is, it is a necessary thing to do.

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