MEDICAL COVER
Five Suppliers - Multiple Options
"If you were suffering chest pain, had a sore knee or back, but you were told that you could not get admitted to hospital because you were not hurting enough yet, would you prefer to get fixed today or would you want to go on that waiting list and get sorted in two months, three months, six months or more?
Our public system, while great for emergencies, is getting more and more stretched for elective surgery and every four years, around election time, the medical budget becomes a political football again. We hear of patients (Family/Friends) waiting in hospital corridors or being sent home because there are no beds. Waiting lists are manipulated, your degree of pain is assessed against a level of urgency, delay after delay, to get treatment. We all know of family or friends who have been placed in these situations. It's not the doctor's or nurses fault, they are just playing with a limited budget.
- It has been said that the public system needs you to "Get worse - to get better."
Yes, in our great country, we should not have to pay for great medical cover, but the truth is that there are more and more "baby boomers" and others requiring medical treatment. Procedures are getting quicker, more expensive and less invasive, but there is less money to go around to fund these treatments.
Clients today want to have "targetted" medical cover - cover for major events (in hospital surgical or non- surgical events), not for minor events (doctors, prescriptions, optometrists, dental etc). While these add-on benefits are sometimes desirable, they have limited cover and sometimes cost more that the benefit(s) received - Sometimes they don't make financial sense.
In New Zealand with a population of about 4.4 million people, about 1,400,000 people have private medical cover (as at Sept 2009 - see www.healthfunds.org.nz), but a lot of these are older style, lower cover or "shared plans". These older plans will hardly cover even 50% of the costs of most common surgeries today. With this cover, have a knee or a hip operation (a total cost of about $22,000), these plans will pay about $8-$10,000 of that, leaving a major balance to be paid by the client. There is a common belief held by persons that have the older 80% plans (covers part of surgery & non-surgical events and also 80% of doctors and prescriptions as per a schedule), that this plan will cover 80% of any surgery event, but they find out too late that this is not correct.
You don't insure your car to cover the cost for the replacement of wiper blades or spark plugs (likened to Doctors fees, prescriptions, optometrists, dental etc minor costs), but you want to have cover if your car has a major accident (likened to Surgery or In-hospital medical treatment) and you are prepared to pay an excess if required (not 50% of the cost of the operation).
We offer a choice of supplier and plans (including the full covers if you want), using benefits that target the high cost areas, so that you only have to find the excess (e.g. $250/$300/$500/$600 etc) that you have selected - not thousands of dollars. This is what you now do with your House/Contents/Car insurance so why not with your medical insurance.
Things to look out for with Medical Insurance
- There are various standard exclusions placed on most policies but these are just common sense exclusions (cosmetic surgery, Self-harm etc)
- With more and more exclusive drug treatments being developed, most companies will not fund these drugs especially if they are not subsidized by the Government Funding Agency Pharmac. We know of some that will cover the full cost of these drugs (up to limits) regardless of what Pharmac does.
- A wise person once said about insurance: "Select the highest excess you can afford, this will drop the regular premium which you need to pay and you only have to find the excess when/if you have a claim under the policy that requires you to pay this excess (companies vary in how they apply the excess).
- There tends to be a "leapfrogging" effect from insurance companies relating to the levels of cover they provide. While this is a bit of "marketing" more is better.
- Don't always buy on price - "you don't want to buy a cheap parachute"
Get a quote now from Accuro for SmartCare or for non-residents on work permits use SmartStay
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