One of the most frequently asked questions of me at Parkdale Chiropractic is which health insurance is the best. The answer is what do you need. Private health insurance is dependent on what you are going to require for your health needs. For instance,  a 70 year old woman most likely will not need pregnancy insurance. My Top 10 Tips for selecting your health insurance are:

1. What extras are you intending to use? For example you visit your chiropractor, massage therapist and acupuncturist each month, make sure your insurance has a high coverage for these modalities.
2. What hospital cover do you need? This is more complicated than extras. In the unfortunate event that you require hospital care, does your family history, lifestyle or sporting and recreational activities put you at a high risk of injury or illness?
3. What excess or gap does you insurance charge?
4. What waiting limits are imposed by your health insurer before you can access a particular treatment?
5. What percentage of the consultation fee do you receive back?
6. What annual limit do you have per year?
7. Should you split your hospital and extras cover between different health insurance provider? For example, you may receive better coverage by having you hospital with BUPA, but your extras with Medibank.
8. Does your insurer allow you to use funds from other covered modalities that have not reach their annual limits? For example, you max out your chiropractic and you can use funds that were allocated to physiotherapy.
9. Does your insurer force you to see a certain practitioner and discriminate against your preferred practitioner?
10. Health is important. If you are disciplined and certain tax breaks are not important to you, maybe putting money aside for your health needs is a more logical and less restrictive avenue to better health coverage.

Finally, remember every year you are allocated an annual limit to use on health care. If you don’t utilise those funds they are lost. Keep up to date with your health needs and use your health insurance.

Yours in health

Dr Jonathan Novytarger
Chiropractor
Parkdale Chiropractic Clinic