A tremendous amount of needless pain and suffering can be eliminated by ensuring that health insurance is universally available.
- Daniel Akaka -
Insurance means, "protection against a possible eventuality," and there's many different types: Vehicle, business, house, goods and chattels, life, vacation, pet, financial and more...I have several of those myself along with health insurance also. None of those insurances come cheaply and one could argue that it's a lot of expense to cover something that may never occur, and I agree; however I've weighed the cost against the ramifications of such events eventuating and how things would play out without the safety net of insurance and I deemed the cost viable.
Health insurance is split into two categories here: Hospital and extras. Obviously the former covers hospital-related scenarios like surgeries and treatments, sleep studies, psychiatric, rehabilitation and palliative care just to name a few out of the extensive list. Extras covers dental, chiropractic, podiatry, optical, physiotherapy and so on. It's possible to get one and not the other and also to combine both.
The government push people to have both, it takes pressure off the government Medicare and hospital systems and they have a policy in place that pressurises people to have hospital cover especially, it's called the life time health cover loading.
Put simply the loading policy adds 2% loading to any hospital insurance cover for every year a person does not have hospital cover after the age of thirty one years.
Example: A person has no hospital insurance cover and is at age forty one, so ten years after they turned thirty one. The government loading charged by the insurer would be 12% increasing a $1,000 hospital cover to $1,120 annually. The loading is applied for ten years of continuous cover at the 12% figure and then will drop off. Of course, hospital cover isn't available for $1,000, that's just an example.
I've only had extras cover since 2007, I dropped my hospital cover off as it was pretty costly and I had other commitments. Recently though, and in light of certain health scenarios, I have had to revisit it.
I will shortly need a device that will be permanently attached to my body to deliver a drug as needed; it will simplify my life but comes at a cost of $9,500AUD. However, if I was to have hospital insurance it's free of charge completely. That sounds like a good deal, but of course, I'll have to add hospital cover to my health insurance policy and that comes with cost...and the loading I mention above. (I'll also have to wait out the 12-month waiting period for the benefit.)
Last week I did the research measuring two alternative providers against my own existing and both were far more costly and, interestingly, their level of cover was much less when stacked up against my own provider.
I decided to stick with my own provider, added on the hospital cover element and all was good...except the loading I mentioned earlier. Because of gap years (2007 to now) since having hospital cover it means that for the next ten years I'll have to pay a 28% loading on top of the monthly premium. The hospital cover added to my extras cover and that loading means my monthly health insurance premium now costs me slightly under $3,000AUD annually. It's a lot, but considering the $9,500 cost of that device I need (which won't last forever so I'll need multiple) it seemed prudent.
I understand why the government feels they need to persuade push people into private health insurance; despite all the advances in the medical field we're getting sicker. There's also more people on the planet and a lack of healthcare professionals for various reasons; that puts extreme pressure on clinics, specialist-facilities, ambulance services, hospitals and, of course, the financial ability of the government to provide free healthcare. I'm the first to applaud Australia's Medicare system, it's one of the better ones to be found around the world, but it costs money to run so the government need to look for other options to alleviate the stress upon it and push people to pay for their own cover with private health insurers.
I wonder though, with the cost of living skyrocketing (here at least and probably everywhere) is this life time health cover loading situation being applied by the government viable...or just a bandaid fix? I wonder if people's financial inability to pay for cover, and not having it,
I'm able to pay for private health cover, but it's a lot of money and when added to the many other commitments people have (all of which are increasing) I wonder about the future effect of those who cannot afford it and the cost of their possible health issues upon the already stretched government coffers.
Anyway, I thought I'd open it up to you folks who may want to comment about the healthcare system or health insurance (insurance in general) in your own locations. Is it good, bad, cheap, costly, non-existent...does the government provide a degree of healthcare like in Australia with Medicare and the UK with the NHS and if so how effective is it? What's your approach to it all and why? Feel free to comment below if you're keen.
Design and create your ideal life, tomorrow isn't promised - galenkp
[Original and AI free]
Any images in this post are my own.