Private health insurance, is it worth the money?

Heather Carey has had private health insurance for more than 40 years.

"We are of a generation that grew up thinking we were doing the right thing, you should have private health insurance to take the burden off the public system," Heather Carey told 7.30.

But when she really needed it, her private health insurer let her down. Twice.

"I am angry that this has happened to me. Shocked, distressed."
"I am not a stupid person and I fell for it hook line and sinker."

Every step is agony for the 65-year-old, facing a long wait for a hip replacement.

"I'm in a position where I have to wait until August 2018," she explained tearfully.

"I take lots of drugs, use a walking stick, I manage the pain."

'I thought I'd ticked the boxes'

When Heather Carey needed cataract surgery in 2015, she discovered her policy did not cover the procedure, so she had to pay $3,000 for each eye.

Not wanting to be caught out again, she revised her policy and increased her cover and was confident she would be covered for whatever medical issues arose.

"I thought I'd dotted the i's, crossed the t's, ticked the boxes," she said.

"Now, I desperately need a hip replacement and that particular box was not ticked.

"I can have a joint reconstruction, a prosthesis … but not a joint replacement."

For the hip replacement she would need tens of thousands of dollars.

"Funding that independently is just not possible," she said.

"$30,000 would probably be cheap."
Ms Carey now wonders whether all her years of paying health insurance has been worth it.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-11/is-private-health-insurance-worth-the-mone...




It's about time the govt. stopped using our tax dollars to prop up this scam industry. Legalised theft is all it is.

I don't have private insurance as it's a total waste of money.

Firstly, I can invest than money and self insure but as the above article indicates, you pay your money and you're still arsephucked.

Back in my corporate days one of my employers included full coverage in my package and I actually needed two operations in that 5 year period.

A microdiscectomy and a tonsillectomy.  For both it was cheaper (almost free) and just as fast to go public.

For both procedures I saw a top specialist who agreed to do the procedure in the public system. So basically all I paid a few lots of specialist fees prior to the procedure, then zero in the public system.

To go private was going to cost a few thousand out of pocket for each.

I reckon there should be private coverage which ONLY pays for a different wing of the hospital for patients who can't hack a shared room.

Gordon wrote on Sep 11^th, 2017 at 2:13pm:


Interesting.

I've just spent a few days in a shared ward where a woman drove me insane with her endless talking and her ENDLESS focus on me as though my role was to be her own private Conversational Prostitute. Drove me NUTS!

And then she admitted she had full private cover but didn't want to spend her time on her own in a room with no one to talk to .... aaaaaaaarrrrrggghhh ... !

Lord Herbert wrote on Sep 11^th, 2017 at 2:38pm:



I noticed you were away for a few days, all good I hope.
Next time, ensure you have some headphones. Even if you don't switch them on you can pretend you can't hear her and she'll shut her trap.

Gordon wrote on Sep 11^th, 2017 at 2:44pm:


It was a bit of a comedy routine.

She was propped up in the bed opposite me, with hers and my privacy screens between us. Unlike everyone else in the 4-bed ward, she alone had her curtain fully drawn aside so she could trap people coming and going into having to listen to all her autobiographical anecdotes of which she had an ENDLESS repertoire at the age 89 ....

Don't let the age fool you. She was tall and ramrod straight in her bearing, articulate, intelligent, fit as a Mallee Bull (cow?), and more active than a score of Leftwing protesters.

Even the nurses began to increasingly avoid her and fob her off with a brief "Yes" or "No" before mercifully making their departure out of sight-and-sound of her.

Whenever she was distracted, I would slowly pull my curtain closed against the sight and sound of her ...

I don't mind being on the opposite side of the argument - I usually am.

It's easy to find cases where someone is disappointed. Tough titties. She should have made sure that she was covered for all the things she might need.

But what about all the people - hundreds of thousands of them - who are able to access hip or knee replacements or cataracts or dozens of other things within weeks instead of months and years, or instead of after they're dead which is a lot of use.

You don't mention that you wankers!

I've 'worked' both in Public and Private.
Now the Privatised version that you see is mostly USA induced and quite a racket (thanks to Hillary Clinton  back in the day when she was in charge of USA Health ...which was just a 'show of' to revenue rake for Politics).

What you mostly get are nice Hospitals that look like Hotels - with nice carpet, pretty paintings on the walls, extra TV channels, a choice of beers or wines with your meals, your meals being slightly better than Public, more single rooms and basically all the things you don't really need in a Hospital experience ...because what you do need is an ICU or Emergency Room in the Private Hospital if something does go wrong, rather than having to be shipped by Ambulance into the Public Hospital. Yep - I've seen Doctors 'lie' just to get the Private patient in.

As for the Health 'insurance' - yeah, its an expensive thing these days. But what you don't see advertised on TV is the Health 'Providers' (like Ramsey, Healthscope, etc) - all of whom make massive profits with their very tight and skimpy budgets - both at the costs of Patient and even Staff.

Yep - its like Sydney, you pay a lot more for far less now.

Of course, you have the Public and all of its flaws.
But hey, its for FREE.

So - we have a society who legally 'sue' the Public system for all the 'free' care they get like a bunch of ungrateful a-holes. Each Public Hospital averages 200,000 law suits a year! 
While the Private Hospital rips the patients off possibly $20 million a year.

Sure, if you go Private - the last thing you need to do when you are OLD is wait in a que, so the processing plant of just routine ops is pretty fast (the more people the get in, operated on and kicked out the next day - the more money they make  ).
While junkie a-hole or lazy Houso are milking the FREE Public system for as long as they can in search of any excuse to take legal action for malpractice, while holding up the turnover of beds.

There's a lot more to it.
But basically I left for a number of reasons.
But hey, this is what all Australians want anyway.
If they didn't - they would produce a Medical system like that of other countries, rather than that two nations more apt at winning wars.

Btw - I never pay a cent for anything majorly medical.
You see - in the USA, its all about the customer.
But in Australia - its all about the 'worker' first, not the customer.
So - you have gotta be in it to win it
Sorry, but that's the way it is. 

Out of curiosity, what does a hip replacement cost per side in Australia?

Can get it done in Thailand for about $10KUSA per side, says Google