Private Health..Yay or Nay

Probably better off supporting the medicare system, PHI really should not exist.

 

Why?
Cos it works and we have one of the best health systems in the world

 

Is the premium surcharge only for ten years? We have been paying for PHI for about 30 years because I understood at the time that the surcharge was forever, making it outrageously uneconomical to join only in later years when one is more likely to use in-hospital services. We lose out again. We took out PHI about a week before the surcharge rule came in, when Hubby was in his early 30s and we had 2 young kids.

We are a couple in our early 60s now and pay $280 a month and I am leaning towards dropping the extras. We have limited hospital cover but can upgrade it later with a one year wait for joint replacements. It doesn't cover heart/vascular admissions to Pvt H either, which is fine as we would go to Public emergency if that was going to happen.

 

???

Patients paying a fee to use private hospitals gets people off long queues at public hospitals. When we use the public system, it is costing the government, not reducing public expenditure. Sorry I dont understand what you mean by "supporting" the medicare system by not having a health insurance system.

 

Money goes into healthcare, whether through Medicare or PHI. The public hospitals have long queues because public health care is underfunded and constantly undermined by the government, PHI is their tool of attack. If the PHI money is put to the public pool then everyone can have better care and shorter queues, instead of creating a two tier system. The public health system is more efficient due to econmomy of scale, more of your money actually goes to care instead of administration, not to mention company profits.

 

Because we are in danger of losing this health system. The government is constantly undermining medicare. Our system is only good because of the existence of a strong public health system, which puts pressure on all PHI so they cannot get away with dodgy practices like not insuring pre-existing conditions, rejecting ill people, and dropping coverage. Let's be honest here, it's not profitable doing business with sick people.

 

people are dumping private cover, its just not making sense

Two million Aussies dump private health insurance as prices soar

 

Below is the link to the excellent privatehealth.gov.au comparison website.

Start

Not sure if has been mentioned already in this thread.

I would recommend doing a hospital only comparison first, in preference to a hospital plus extras comparison, as there are too many variables with extras.
You can always add extras later.

Also, from my enquiries direct to health funds about a year ago, it seems that including extras is basically just adding the hospital cover to the cost of the extras cover, with maybe a small discount. (around 5% from memory) But that was outweighed by the benefit of being able to choose a more economical extras cover suitable to my needs from a different provider.

I don't choose to have PHI because of the cost benefit, if there is one, but for the peace of mind in having some say in when and where I will receive medical care......Priceless!

 

I had my knee replacement at a well known public hospital in Newcastle, an experience I dont ever want to go through again ...

 

If you drop cover and are worried about waiting and the public system, Why not just go to a JCI accredited hospital in a medical tourism country?. ie for Australians that would be Thailand and Yanhee for example. Or in Europe, Turkey is a medical tourism country. JCI is the gold standard for international accredited hospitals
About JCI | Joint Commission International
I have CIGNA insurance provided by work but I still go to Thailand from China for electives and check-ups every holidays if I need- people form all over the world go there

 

Or just pocket the money...

i have saved $200,000
And guess what.... surprise surprise had various procedures, not cost me a cent

scaremongering is working... be bold... be brave...

 

Thank you and yes I did come across and used this when searching, the result was Weatfund for $243 pm (i think). Anyone have uses Weatfund?

There is another site I found "Big Switch" sort of.community based and they have HCF promoting approx $105 pm (post oct) very basic....

 

Hi @MTR , just want ti ask how do you avoid Medicare Levi or you juat pay it as part of your tax return?

OR

Is it posaible to claim all.expenses by having multiple IPs to bring the income below.threasholds?

 

The ‘surcharge’ (called Lifetime Healthcover Loading) only came in in 2000 - not 30 years ago. Details below from federal government website: Lifetime Health Cover

Lifetime Health Cover
Lifetime Health Cover (LHC) is a Government initiative that started on 1 July 2000. It was designed to encourage people to take out hospital cover earlier in life and encourage them to maintain it.

If you purchase hospital cover earlier in life, and keep it, you will avoid paying an extra amount called 'LHC loading'.

In some cases you may be exempt from LHC loading or fit into a special circumstancescategory.

If you are joining or transferring between insurers, or if you fit into one of the new migrant or special circumstances categories, you will need to establish your LHC loading by supplying supporting documents.

LHC loadings only apply to hospital cover.

General treatment (extras) cover, Overseas Visitors Health Cover, Overseas Student Health Cover, and international forms of insurance are not considered to be hospital cover for Lifetime Health Cover purposes.

Who pays LHC loading?
You can avoid paying LHC loading if you take out hospital cover with an Australian registered health insurer before your Lifetime Health Cover base day and you maintain your hospital cover.

If you do not have hospital cover on your Lifetime Health Cover base day and then decide to take out hospital cover later in life, you will pay a 2% loading on top of your hospital premium for every year you are aged over 30, based on your age on the 1 July prior to joining.

The maximum LHC loading that anyone can pay is 70%. Increased premiums due to LHC loading stop after 10 years of continuous hospital cover.

 

Hi, I’m away camping and only just reconnected to the net. Anyways when you get to our age, going back 20 or 30 years is a blur. I always believed that the Lifetime add 2% per year just went on forever. Thank you for pointing out the facts, it’s not high on my priorities to research.

When we were a single income two kids and an outrageous mortgage (sitcom) household, we didn’t have the hindsight of this forum to base financial decisions on.

 

We have the most basic policy to avoid MLS and use the public system when it's fine and pay cash for private when it’s not. We were going to bump up the policy but found that it still had heaps of exclusions and out of pocket fees, it wouldn’t have covered the stuff we wanted it for anyway.

 

We dropped ours years ago. When we go to the dentist they decrease the fee as we are paying cash and same with medical procedures, just tell the specialist you are paying cash and you have no Health cover and they will do you a deal. It’s a scam!!

 

Yeah my old dentist used to inflate the price so that the 70% I got back from the insurer matches what he was actually charging and then I didn’t pay anything