Which health fund do I choose?
What am I covered for?
How can I compare health funds?
These are all very important questions and not easily answered either. It seems that the way the health funds have structured their information has been done to deliberately confuse their potential clients. It is not easy to compare one fund to the other and can get very confusing very quickly!
Several of our patients thought there were covered for spinal surgery and discovered that their fund had changed their coverage without them realising.
It is definitely worth shopping around and doing your research.
Beware of the websites claiming to compare funds. If you look at those websites and see the list of funds they are actually comparing it is usually only a small section of the market. They aren’t actually comparing all of the funds so you aren’t really getting a good cross-section of what is actually out there.
A lot of the funds will now tailor your cover to suit you instead of you having to pay for a lot of things that you will probably never claim for. The best thing to do is work out what is important for you and your family (whether it’s a heart bypass, a spinal fusion or a knee replacement etc) and what you definitely want to be covered for and then go to each fund and get a quote to be covered for those things.
If you are thinking you are likely to need spinal surgery (eg spinal fusion, fenestration for partial discectomy, anterior cervical discectomy and fusion, posterior lumbar interbody fusion and postero lateral fusion, microendoscopic discectomy etc) in the future it is a really good idea to go to your fund and check that you are covered. If you upgrade your cover to include spinal surgery it will be a 12 month wait until you will be able to use your cover.
Our friendly staff are always here to answer any questions that we can as well.