Options for Health Insurance

If you’re wondering whether or not you need health insurance, you probably do. Unless you’re extremely wealthy and you can foot an emergency medical bill without going to anyone with hat in hand, you will most likely need to be insured. Even if you are wealthy, as you age, health issues will come up more and more often and will cost more and more; are you sure that your wallet can take hit after hit in that fashion? The more sensible thing to do, then, is to start early (the younger the better) and purchase health insurance for the long term, for both you and your family.
Public Health Care
Your first option is to avail yourself of the public healthcare that Australians have access to via Medicare. This gives free use of select medical and health services offered by public healthcare institutions. The issue with this is that there is often a long line of patients for each service, and cases are treated based on ‘emergency’, as defined by the institution. So if your condition doesn’t qualify, be prepared to wait.
Private Insurance
The only other option is to bite the bullet and the premiums to insure yourself through a private organisation. Since Medicare only allows a certain number of claims per year, private insurance is the only choice for people who require constant or repetitive medical aid.
Generally speaking, there are three types of cover: private hospital cover – which covers accommodation costs, theatre fees and a percentage of doctor fees – general treatment cover – which takes care of frequently accessed health services provided by dentists, optometrists and podiatrists – and the third type is Ambulance cover, which guarantees 24-hour ambulance availability no matter where you are in Australia. In addition to these three basic cover types, there is also pharmaceutical cover, which will ensure you can buy certain expensive medicines for less.
The other important element in choosing a health insurance plan is to pay attention to the amount of coverage you need. Very often we shop around for the ‘cheapest’ policy but don’t consider whether we’re being adequately covered or not. After all, of what use is insurance which doesn’t offer us the protection we need?
 
So our advice is to first accept that you need it, and then go the extra step past Medicare and buy a health insurance policy that covers you and your family members properly, even if you pay an uncomfortable amount as premium. After all, health is wealth, and misfortune never knocks on the door before it steps in.