i had it for about a year when i first moved out of home and soon cottoned on to how much of a scam it is. Havent had it since.
If you add up the monthly premiums theres no way it can save you that much from a doctor visit. Basically like paying $300 a year to save $150 off the doctors bill.
Maybe its different for the chronically ill, i havent seen a doctor, specialist or hospital in years.
Need to make sure you have some private cover from age 32...otherwise you start getting penalised like a mofo by the tax man...
THIS. I didn't realise that theres such a thing as age loading on private health insurance. Now I am paying an exorbitant % on top of my cover, to penalise me being all healthy and shit in my 20's and hence not needing cover then. Hard to get my head around this nonsense.
Oh well, judging by the number of times I see my osteo, physio, and massage therapist it pays for itself in the end.
is it really that much difference? how much are you paying?
And are u seeing those specialists to try to salvage value from the insurance or because you actually want to?
i'd be keen to see the sums on:
tax penalty + specialist cost
vs
insurance premium + specialist gaps
It doesn't pay off till you get sick then it pays for itself 10 times over. My Mrs had her knee done, surgeon of choice, private, room, heaps of physio, $1000 out of pocket would have been $20k if we had to pay, and the waiting time on the gold coast for knee reco's is 2.5 years.
It's one of those things everyone thinks is a rip-off till they need it.
We had it for a while, cost a bloody fortune and still had to pay gaps and other shit.
Father in law has top cover, had huge bun fight with insurance company when he first started treatment for his leukemia. They sent him a $20k bill for medicine. After that his specialist ended up throwing him in public.
If the knee reconstruction is required then there would be no out of pocket expense as it's covered by Medicare, we are not in the US, here most medical stuff that is needed is free.
We quit our private cover as they wanted us to pay a few thousand $$ towards my missus having our first child, if you have private health cover you pay, if you have none it's free
Our daughter was born premature, and was in intensive care for two weeks while the missus was in hospital with her in a private room, did not cost us one cent, if we had private health cover it would have cost us a fortune as we would have to pay for our share.