Should i cancel health insurance

Another common scenario is a shocking dental gap for a Crown or Implant because the extras policy had meagre payouts. However, there is another solution. We find this to be very common with people who have been on the same policy for a number of years. Also, consider that most major surgeries such as joint replacements or cardiac-related surgery almost always result in a gap due to the complex nature and risk related to the surgery.

These conversations might be more about reducing the gap, rather than eliminating it. With big-ticket extras items Major Dental being the main offender , a smart insured Australian should check the rebates of their extras policy annually. Many health insurers tend to wow and woo customers with high annual limits. The Howard government tried to turn that around by introducing a Medicare Levy Surcharge in , penalising those without private coverage.

In , the introduction of Lifetime Health Cover resulted in a spike in membership. In , the Gillard government began means testing the rebate, which saw another small spike in the number of insured Australians, but the decline resumed again. They're not seeing value in the premiums, they feel the premiums are getting too high [and] also they've heard some bad stories about out of pockets, and some people are even frightened to use their health insurance because they don't have the cash to pay for the out of pockets," Mr Savvides said.

It's designed for people to use to take pressure off the public system. And that's the role it's played for many, many years. And we need to get that balance back. Mr Savvides says the current generation of young people will live longer than those in the system now, and therefore they will be heavy users of future health systems.

Even Rachel David, chief executive of Private Healthcare Australia, the health insurance industry's peak body, admits the sector could "do better" to sell insurance to younger people. Public policy think tank the Grattan Institute put forward a radical proposal last month aimed at stemming the youth exodus. The suggestion involved doing away with the "community rating" system for young people — a system which allows everyone to pay similar premiums despite their age or medical risk — which would make it cheaper for young people to buy insurance.

It's inherently unstable. We've got to do something about it. But we say keep it for older people, but have age-based risk rating the younger people. But Mr Savvides said any plan to scrap the community rating system would swamp the public system. And the transition would be far too shocking for them in terms of financial access. So we would lose them and we would lose them to the public system and you would create havoc there," he said.

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.

Key points: Young people are leaving private health insurance because of the high costs George Savvides, former head of Medibank, says this will place much more pressure on the public health system in the future Mr Savvides said it would also make private health insurance more expensive.

Is private health insurance headed for the emergency ward? Young, healthy and not paying private insurance?

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