The Basics of Health Insurance
As we all know, health insurance is the best way to secure your health against all expected and unexpected problems. Due to this almost every individual seeks to acquire a health insurance policy. Just like any other forms of insurance, health insurance is also a form of collectivism and through which selected people voluntarily pool and accumulate their possible risk like having medical needs and expenses.
These days, there are many companies offering health insurance. Of course, some health insurance are provided by the government while some are from private companies. So, while going for a health insurance policy you will confront a choice between private and government insurance.
Prior to opting for either policy, you should know that with a private health insurance you would have an access to luxurious private hospitals, wide range of private doctors to choose from and mostly immediate treatment.
However, while in a government health insurance scheme the lifetime health cover penalizes people who take out health insurance later in life with higher premiums. If you take the policy after your 31st birthday you will be required to pay a 2% surcharge annually up to 70%. So for instance if you acquire the policy at the age of 50 you will have to pay 30% more than a person who joined at the age of 30. Besides, government health insurance policy also comes up with a Medicare levy surcharge according to which unmarried people earning more than $50k and married couples with or without children earning more than $100k will pay an extra 1% Medicare surcharge in addition to 1.5% Medicare levy most people pay. But this extra annual expenditure of $500 to $1000 can be avoided by opting for hospital insurance.
Choosing a health insurance policy that doesn’t include several treatment facilities is also an option to lower your premium rates. Besides this you can also buy a policy that only covers you as a private patient in a public hospital. However, it is better and in the long run beneficial to take a policy that offers a high ‘excess’ in comparison to those that exclude several treatment conditions.
