Considering health insurance but not sure how to choose the health cover that's right for you?
We've put five easy tips together to help you choose the best health insurance policy to suit you and your family, while hopefully saving you a few dollars in the process.
At a very basic level, health insurance consists of two components that you can either take out individually or together:
Hospital cover: This covers the cost of hospital accommodation, doctors' fees, theatre and medical expenses for procedures that generally require in-hospital treatment, such as joint replacements, cardiac surgery and birth-related services.
Extras cover: These are 'ancillary' services provided by qualified practitioners, including benefits for optical, dental, physio, remedial massage and more. With Extras cover, you can receive annual benefits for a range of different non-hospital services.
It's up to you which component(s) you want cover for, and many health funds offer combined packages with Hospital and Extras cover to suit a particular lifestyle or life stage. In general, hospital cover is more expensive than extras cover, and is a requirement to avoid Lifetime Health Cover penalties as well as the Medicare Levy Surcharge. Just remember that in order to avoid the Medicare Levy Surcharge, your Excess must be no greater than $500 for singles, or $1000 for couples and families.
Private health insurance plans offer different levels of health cover to meet a variety of needs. Obviously, the more comprehensive the health plan, the more expensive the premium will be. moneytime allows you to select a level of cover that best suits your budget and specific needs.
If you choose the most comprehensive option, your search result will show the highest level of cover from each of our participating health funds. In this case, your health insurance policy would provide full cover for a large range of hospital services to reduce or eliminate out-of-pocket expenses. Most comprehensive extras provide higher benefit limits for a large range of features, eg. $2000 for dental benefits as opposed to $500 on a lower plan.
When you choose your own level of cover, you can select which features you want to be covered for - for example, you may want cover for pregnancy and birth-related services but not hip and knee joint replacement surgery. The moneytime search engine will find the most cost-effective policy that provides full cover for all the features you select as part of your search criteria. As a general rule, the more features you select, the higher the level of cover and cost of the policy.
If you decide to choose your own level of cover, you'll need to figure out which health insurance features you want cover for. To do that, consider your lifestyle and medical history:
Look at your lifestyle and decide which features are most important to you - a quick health check with your GP might also reveal features you should consider for private health insurance. Keep in mind that some features, like pregnancy and birth-related services or most treatment related to pre-existing conditions, require a 12 month waiting period. Plan ahead and take out cover for features that you think you may need ahead of time.
Our search engine will automatically select the most affordable health insurance policy from each of our participating health funds that provides full cover for all the features you selected. That way, you can compare which policies best suit your needs and simply choose the health cover that gives you the most benefits for the features you need. Easy, isn't it?
Excess and Co-payment options allow you to lower your up-front health insurance premium by agreeing to pay an out-of-pocket sum when you are admitted to hospital.
An Excess is a single sum paid when you are admitted to hospital, regardless of your length of stay, while Co-payments are spread over the first few nights/days that you spend in hospital, rather than an up-front amount. For example, if you choose a $250 Excess, your premium will be lower but you will need to pay $250 when admitted to hospital, whether it's for a single night or for a month. If you choose a co-payment of $50x5, you're spreading the total amount payable ($250) over the first 5 days of your hospital stay, so if you're in hospital for a single night, you only pay $50.
These options are an ideal way to reduce your health insurance premium if you don't expect to go to hospital in the near future, but still want to retain hospital cover 'just in case' or to avoid the Medicare Levy Surcharge. Different health insurance policies offer different levels of Excess or Co-payments, though Excesses tend to be more popular with the health funds. Some policies offer you a range of options, while others offer none at all. On moneytime, you can easily see your options on the results page:
To see what impact each Excess or Co-payment option has on your health insurance policy, click on a different option and we'll automatically update your monthly premium in the neighbouring column. In order to compare like with like, it may be worth selecting similar Excess and Co-payment amounts for different health insurance policies to see comparative value.
Excess and Co-payment options definitely have an impact on the cost of your premium, so keep them in mind when comparing your health insurance policies.
This could well have been point number one, because it goes without saying that it's much easier to view all the information you need on one site instead of visiting multiple sites. Why research the hard way when it's all been done for you?
moneytime helps you compare your options at a glance by showing what's available from our participating health funds (all major Australian health funds) and which health insurance policies suit your needs, based on your own search criteria. We'll show you which features are covered, the benefit limits of each plan and what health insurance jargon actually means, so you can understand what you're getting for your money and choose the best health insurance plan for you.
It's easy to use – start comparing health insurance plans today.
