Private health insurance reforms 2019: what you need to know

Private health insurance reforms are on the way, find out what you need to know.

Feel free to comment below with any questions.

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“The set-up of these categories plays into the hands of insurers who now have the means to better market their products, while consumer confusion remains unaddressed.”

A cynic, or just some casual observers, might think it is doing exactly what this government wants. :roll_eyes:

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It continues to frustrate me that psychiatric services are so low priority for the government.

Anyone who needs psychiatric cover has to take out a gold policy. So regardless of age and sex you’re paying for cover for pregnancy, complex terminal illnesses, joint replacements and several other treatments you’re unlikely to ever use. This is despite the fact that unlike those treatments, psychiatric care is needed by people in all demographics.

To make matters worse the public system can make things worse for someone with psychiatric needs as public hospitals are rarely equipped to handle those cases. So you wind up waiting in emergency for hours then put in a ward with an array of upsetting incidents being dealt with around you.

Yeah you can upgrade with no wait period once in a lifetime, but realistically you may need to use that early on. It should be mandatory for health insurers to offer a psychiatry only add on imo.

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Good luck to anyone who is in reasonable health and subscribes tot he health industry cartel.
We opted out decades ago when a work colleague on top cover was forced to pay a huge gap fee. He opted out of insurance and never went back.
The only value I can see in health insurance is the peace of mind angle if you get a disease which needs to be treated immediately.
The whole industry is a scam seen over by a destitute government which rubber stamps the annual 6%+rise in premiums. Good luck to players. We’re out and hope that Medicare covers us. If not then such is life!

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Weekend to-do list: check your current health insurance policy and read about the changes coming into effect on Monday:

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We look at what the recent private health insurance reforms mean for seniors:

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An aspect some people might be interested in knowing. One can always trust private enterprise to do the right thing, according to government. At least when the right thing is defined as putting or keeping a dollar in its pocket. As with the attitude of many pollies, rules are for others.

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Adding insult to injury!

We’re also finding the reforms have created a lot of confusion.

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The key lesson is always check your private health insurance regularly. I checked at the start of this year and couldn’t find anything comparable to my cover that wasn’t at least $300/year more. I checked again 2 days ago and found one that was $300/year more but included at least that value in added extras cover.

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A key question is do or would you use one or more of those added extras? Therein lies a key to profitability of the extras products. No matter how long the list of ‘features’ might be, most of us don’t use many of them and reach the individual limits of what we do use fairly quickly.

eg, the marketing is superb, the product usually not so much.

Yeah when I say ‘at least that value’ I mean I could claim at least that much on stuff I already use.

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