Like any other expenditure, you wouldn’t want to excessively spend on your health fund every month. But because purchasing more expensive health fund offers more, it wouldn’t be a good idea either to under-buy your health insurance cover.
So it’s a question of balance: getting a health plan that’s neither too little nor too substantial for your earnings.
Here’s a set of tips that would help you get the best health plan in Chatswood.
Review your extras
Note that there is a discrepancy between the services that are being offered and what you would get back as rebates. Therefore, ensure that your cover offers competitive prices and meets your requirements.
The cost of your insurance plan should give value in terms of the services included in the policy. Some policies for instance give benefits to the client, yet with others, family members can avail of the benefits too.
Some policies group together particular general treatment services and apply a benefit limit to these groups of services.
Your health fund will essentially have extra (general treatment) cover besides the basic hospital cover. A lot of consumers prefer to have this.
The extras in this case include dentist services in Chatswood, optical treatment, physiotherapy and a host of other services. Unless you review the extras, you might end up paying for something you don’t need.
Given the variations on extras, it would be difficult to review them. Best to enlist the help of professionals on this. If you live in Chatswood, there are numerous companies that can help you understand your extras and why you should choose one health insurance policy over the other.
Health insurance policy should match your needs
Sometimes matching the policy to your needs may mean taking more than one insurance. And since your hospital and general treatment policies do not necessarily have to be with the same health insurer, you could take cover for the two different aspects from two different insurers. The aim is to get the most out of your health fund.
Here’s the deal: by having different insurers for your hospital cover and the extras (general treatment policies) you save money on your overall health fund plan. The rebate terms for the two types of cover often differ from insurer to insurer.
You may therefore find a policy that pays better rebates for services that are significant to you – such as dentist Chatswood services, optical or orthodontic services. On the other hand, there’s a health fund that offers a hospital policy that suits your current needs much better.
In this case, you might be tempted to think you have to drop one of the policies that’s favourable to you simply because they are two favourable policies from two separate insurers.
But you don’t have to forgo anything at all. You can actually take the hospital policy from the health fund that better suits your current needs and then the extras policy that offers better rebates.
That’s why it’s important to review your current policy/ies and ensure that the premiums are actually competitive and offers services you need. Doing so would save you money.
Avoid paying both excess and co-payments when you purchase a hospital policy
An excess refers to an upfront payment before the health fund benefits are payable. Though the excess is generally applied on each event of admission into hospital for the year, it could as well be capped at a total amount that you would have to pay in a year.
A co-payment is a payment (the beneficiary) in addition to that made by an insurer. It could be a smaller amount paid each day for the services you receive in a hospital.
Co-payments are similar to excess because the amount you pay in a year is generally set.
Options for excesses or co-payments vary from health fund to health fund – generally you have one or the other, but not both.
Given this, seek to purchase a hospital policy that does not require you to pay both excess and co-payment when you get admitted to hospital. Having to pay both excess and co-payment is costly.
Pay part of the hospital bill in form of excess or co-payment
Paying part of your hospital bill may work in your favour and reduce the amount of the premium.
You could agree to pay part of your hospital bill in the form of either co-payment or an excess payment with the effect of reducing your premium cost.
If you are willing to pay more in co-payment or excess, you will pay lower premiums.
Every health fund in Chatswood offers hospital policies with either excess or co-payments, but some offer both. If you are lucky enough, you could have have a health fund that does not actually charge a co-payment for day surgery.
If you are unhappy with your current plan, consider switching funds
Do not be afraid to switch to a different health fund. The insurance marketplace is replete with lots of great health covers to choose from.
The good part is that you generally won’t have to re-serve waiting periods (the duration that you have to wait before you can make any claims through your health fund) if you are currently covered for a particular service on your hospital policy, unless you are switching to an increased level of cover.
As it is, reviewing your policy is key in ensuring that you are paying competitive premium costs.
Wrap up
Knowing your health fund or insurance plan will help you save money. These tips should help you get the best out of your insurance cover in Chatswood.