A guide to choose private health insurance

This article does not constitute a financial advice. Before proceeding, you should seek an advice from an appropriately qualified financial adviser.

In Australia, Medicare covers treatments in public hospitals as well as visits to GP and optometrists. But public hospitals can be busy, and sometimes patients have to be on waitlist to be treated. Also, for general treatments such as dental or optical treatments, Medicare usually does not cover at all.

In Australia, people buy private health insurance products to have more health care options and to cover items not covered by Medicare. For example, some patients with private health insurance can be treated in private hospitals which tend to have shorter waitlist for operations. Some with private health insurance and general treatment cover (often called ancillary or extra cover) can get partly or fully covered for dental treatments in private practices or in hospitals.

In this guide, I would like to introduce two information sources you can utilise:

https://www.privatehealth.gov.au/

https://www.productreview.com.au/c/health-insurance

1) https://www.privatehealth.gov.au/

This government website helps you to choose right product for you based on your needs, and will also display premiums. If you wish, the website will email you the detailed report about products.

2) https://www.productreview.com.au/c/health-insurance

This website has reviews about services (like whether they will cover or not, and how prompt their phone and claim services are) submitted by users.

There are other health insurance comparison websites but they require your personal details like address, phone number and email address which may cause privacy concerns, they receive commissions so they may not recommend products if they do not receive commissions from some private health insurance companies, and they may keep contacting you to change health insurance which can be annoying sometimes.

At Caringbah Dental Care, we are a preferred provider for Westfund, CBHS and NIB.

Any surgical or invasive procedure carries risks. Before proceeding, you should seek a second opinion from an appropriately qualified health practitioner.

This article does not constitute a financial advice. Before proceeding, you should seek a financial advice from an appropriately qualified financial adviser.