Health insurance

As the title suggests do you have health insurance and do you think its worth it?

I havent had it since turning 21 (i was on my parents) and honestly cant afford it atm, but one of the lades i work with, her daughter required treatment for cervical cancer (she was only 14) and all up the doctors/tests etc cost over $100,000 but her private health covered all but $5,000. Which makes me think i should try and budget it in...what are your thoughts?

We have private health insurance...but just extras...it only costs us $20 a month with the govt rebate. It more than covers itself.

We mostly use
dental
physio
chiro

But it covers alot of other stuff....we dont feel like we need hospital cover because australia has such a great public system smile

we have medibank private, we hunted around for a while to find the right one, medibank offered us more for less than what we found with all the others. We have used it a few times i had my tonsills and adnoids, Df had wisdom teeth then i had wisdom teeth out and we didnt pay any more that about $600 for each surgery, i feel its better in the long run. The longest we waited for surgery was 4 weeks. i think ours is around $60 a week though.

We've got it, only hospital cover & obstetrics though.
I've known so many people who don't have health insurance that are in agony while they wait for an op (one girl had to wait 3yrs to have her gall bladder removed). My cousin, who was about 9 or 10 at the time, went to hospital with appendicitis, but as they didn't have insurance, he had to wait till the next day to have his appendix removed, resulting in it bursting over night - the poor boy! Had his family been covered, he would have been operated ASAP.

We have it mainly for the kids. All three boys have had grommets in their ears and ds1 has had 4 sets now. If we'd been in the public system we'd probably still be waiting - all the while they're getting recurring infections. You have to weigh up weather the saving you make by not having it is worth it at tax time.

yes we have it.I believe its worth it,dh not sure as we dont use it much.His mum is recently widowed and does not have cover( its still being checked because no one seems to know if her husband's veteran's gold card covers her or not).Looks like she will have to fork out about 30 grand for knee replacements.She is in too much pain to wait years on the waiting list

His mum is recently widowed and does not have cover( its still being checked because no one seems to know if her husband's veteran's gold card covers her or not).

My gran was widowed over 30 years ago and still gets medical coverage from veterans affairs.

We have MBF basic hospital cover its $168 a month!

My gran was widowed over 30 years ago and still gets medical coverage from veterans affairs.

that's good to know, they are still waiting for confirmation of it

Yes, we have private health insurance and in relation to the question "do you think its worth it"...well, sometimes yes and sometimes no.

We pay $214 per/month and are with NIB, so basically $2,500 a year. Every month i think "geez, expensive" but its a catch 22..... i don't think i'd really like to be without it. And yet, i pretty much only ever claim for optical expenses (for my glasses).

In saying all that, i'm cranky with our private hospital at the moment because i was due to have surgery on Wednesday....had been booked for months, so not an "emergency" and 2hrs after i was due to be in theatre the nurse advised that my surgery had been cancelled due to a "lack of medical supplies that were required for my operation and that earlier in the day they had already borrowed supplies from the local public hospital and had still run out" - so basically, sorry, go back home and come back in 3 weeks time........ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrr so much for paying private health insurance and expecting a slighty more organised service for an elective surgery!! Sorry, just my little vent for the day smile

I don't like health insurance. The only reason we got it in the first place was because our income was over the threshold where we were getting slogged with the levy.

We actually don't NEED it anymore, based on our income. HOwever because we took it out before we were 30 we have decided to hang onto it as you just never know when you may need it.

We hardly used it for awhile, but we have been claiming on ours weekly at the moment with the Extras. DS1 has just been put in glasses for school. PHC covered all that cost. Plus both boys see OT and speech therapists. We are only out of pocket $25/visit for these with PHC.

SO while I would say its not a necessity ... it is a handy thing to have

We have the top level hospital and extras cover. We are lucky that we got it through work on a corpoate plan we pay $210 per month. We took it out about 4 years ago just before we got married thinking that it was probably a good idea to have it before we had children. We have well and truly got our money worth. We have had 2 bubs privately for which they paid out about $2500 each time. Dh claims contacts and glasses and I have used a fair bit of chiro and massage as well as regular dental so we have paid less in than what we have claimed. I personally felt if I needed an op and chose not to have private health and had to wait that would be my issue but icould'nt stand the thought of my children having to wait.