There are not only a range of insurers to choose from when looking at health insurance cover, there are also a number of extras, inclusions and conditions to compare. Therefore, to help you with your search, following are the five main things you need to pay attention to when choosing health insurance cover:

 

1-Inclusions or exclusions

It is important to decide what you want to be covered for, while balancing those inclusions with how much you can afford to pay in premiums.

2- Annual benefit limits

Each health insurer has extras or ancillary products with a variety of annual benefit limits. This means each year you can claim up to that amount within the year. The following year the annual benefit is replenished to the full amount. So decide what benefits you will use and if they limits will be sufficient whilst balancing the price you want to pay for your private health insurance.

3 – Costs

There are not only the obvious costs of the premiums to look at when comparing health insurance cover, but you also need to pay attention to some of the other costs, such as how much do you have to pay as an excess or a medical gap payment when you make a claim? For example, you may need to pay an excess when you are admitted to hospital, but also find out whether you have to make co-payments for each night you are in hospital too.

4 – Hospital and Extras

Hospital cover covers the expenses of procedures in hospital such as joint replacements, cardiac surgery and birth related services, depending on your level of cover. To avoid being charged the Medicare Levy Surcharge you need to have hospital cover with an excess of $500 or less on a single policy or $1,000 or less on a couples or family policy.

Extras or ancillary cover covers items such as dentist costs, optical costs and even remedial massage and physio.

Depending on your needs, you can either take hospital cover, extras or both.

5 – Level of Cover

The highest level of health insurance will usually cover you for your choice of private hospital and choice of doctor, top cover for hospital services, greater benefits from your extras and higher annual limits. It is important that you pay attention to the level of cover as you compare different policies, rather than simply assuming you’ll be getting inclusive cover just because you are taking out private health insurance.

Allan has been blogging about private health insurance and healthy living for a couple of years. When he is not writing, Allan likes to spend time with his family.