Like policies for individuals, there is both extras and hospital cover options for the health insurance you can choose to take out for yourself and your family. Family cover simply means that your family members will all be covered under the one policy, and pay only one premium. The good news is that it will typically be much more economical to bundle your health insurance into a family option rather than individual policies for each family member in your home.
In many instances, a family policy will also come with a number of benefits assumed to assist in managing the health needs of children, such as gap free dental consultations or no out of pockets expenses on certain extras. Furthermore, it is common that dependent children will not have to pay an excess if they have to be admitted as a private patient into hospital.
Standard exclusions will still apply however, so you are still unlikely to be covered for example, for the cost of liposuction, but you will be covered for a range of treatments as a private patient, meaning that you will avoid the public hospital waiting lists. Some family policies will also offer a combined excess for couples, meaning that once the excess is paid for one person, the other adult partner on the policy will not need to pay it again the event of their admission to hospital in the same year.
Other important things to note when shopping around for the best health insurance is that typically, you will be unable to suspend or upgrade cover for individuals on a combined policy. Therefore, if you decide you want to change a cover for one person in the family you will most likely have to modify or suspend everyone’s level of cover.
You can alsoreduce the impact of your annual health insurance rate rise by redirecting your private health insurance rebate. If you are a family seeking cover, it is good to keep in mind that you are subjected to a higher income threshold. Additionally, the more children you have will also bump up the total income your household is allowed to receive before the rebate percentage that you’re eligible to receive is reduced.
Another tip is to adjust how this private health rebate is paid to you. Instead of receiving it as an annual tax offset, you can opt to receive it via your health insurance fund which will mean you will pay reduced premiums.Be aware though, you will need to have private patient hospital cover to take advantage of this rebate, extras only cover will not enable you to qualify!
So take a moment to analyse the health needs of yourself and family in order to determine what level of cover will best suit your lifestyle. Be sure to select a policy that includes ambulance cover for all of the family and to avoid large medical bills, take note of when limits and excesses reset, whether it be financial or calendar year.
