Life hacks to save money with your health insurance in Australia

A family health insurance plan can easily cost over $4-5K these days. And premium has been going up and up and up.

I often wonder what value did we get for having private health insurance. Private health insurance doesn't cover the gap when we see doctors/specialists. Being a family with kids, at most each year, we get some benefits from seeing the dentist and getting new glasses.

If not for the Medicare surcharge, in our case, it doesn't make much sense to have private health insurance at all. 

Not being mission critical, it makes sense to figure out ways to drive down the premium.

There are two hacks that I often use. The first one is quite common. Prepay the premium each year before April. We are with one of the large funds (HCF). Its system allows us to prepay 18 months in advance to lock in the "old" premium as long as possible.

The second life hack is, when it is time to renew, call the fund and ask to speak with the cancellation department. Our experience with HCF is the fund won't negotiate on the premium but is prepared to throw in an extra month upon renewal (so one year premium will cover 13 months instead of 12). 

At the cost of two phone calls, can save few $100s each year.

Another hack with HCF is when seeing a dentist go to its dental centre. There is no gap payment vs. seeing a dentist externally in some cases.