Health insurance: know your rights

No. When it comes to private health insurance in Australia, if you have had a breast cancer diagnosis, your options to change providers or policies are the same as someone who hasn’t had cancer.

No. You cannot be charged more for private health insurance or refused cover based on your medical history.

Health insurance is different to other insurances such as life insurance or travel insurance, where a pre-existing condition may affect the type of cover you can access and/or how much you pay for it.

With health insurance, a pre-existing condition will not affect the level of cover you can access or the price you pay; however, you may have a 12-month waiting period before you are covered for the pre-existing condition.

With private hospital cover, any waiting periods you’ve already served will be protected by law as long as you swap to an equivalent or lower level of cover.

If you take out a higher level of hospital cover, you will only need to serve the waiting periods on the new services you’re adding to your policy.

If you had a gap between having cover, you may have to re-serve the waiting periods, depending on the length of time between insurers.

Yes, it’s important the provider knows what your medical needs are so they can help you choose the most suitable cover.

Remember, you can’t be charged more based on your medical history.

Don’t set and forget as you may be paying for cover you no longer need. You may want to review your private health insurance cover each year to ensure it still suits your life stage and health needs and offers value.

Some providers offer Silver Plus products which can be great value for older customers and may cover things such as hip replacements or cataracts while excluding services such as pregnancy.

If you currently have a couples policy but you and your partner have different health needs, you may be able to save money and better tailor your cover by splitting your cover from a couples policy to two singles.

Many people take up combined policies for hospital and extras cover with the same provider but there could be no financial benefit. You can choose to split these policies across different providers.

Private health insurance can be really confusing, so speak to someone who can help.

Contact your current insurance provider to discuss your needs or use an online insurance comparison site to find out what other options are available.