Private Health Care

[Mike@Bonbeach]

Hi all you people heading to or recently arrived in Australia. We arrived here on a CPV and started doing all the normal things,buying a car,house furniture etc. Didn't give much consideration to the question of health cover until the last few days. Doing research into private medical cover, we found out that newly arrived immigrants have 12 months to take out a private scheme.If you don't take one out before the year is up, when you do eventually take one out you will have to pay a surcharge(LHC I think it's called) which works out as 2% surcharge for each year over the age of 30. For someone of our ages that would have worked out as a 70% loading on top of any premium,making quite a difference to your premiums.

Also if you're involved in an accident you can be liable for the cost of the ambulance call out,here in Victoria you can take out a family ambulance insurance for just $120 which to my way of thinking is pretty good value. Some health care policies include this in their packages.

There is a company which looks at a number of companies and comes up with the one which best meets your needs. You can go on line at www.iselsect.com.au ,enter your requirements and it'll pick out the one for you. The prices they come up with are exactly the same as if you had contacted the Healthcare company directly. At least it'll give you an idea of the costs for different packages.

 

Hope you find these tips helpful

 

Mike and Connie