Healthcare in Australia
February 13, 2021 — July 23, 2023
Australia healthcare: It is weird, but pretty good compared to others I’ve used. This is a low bar. But for all its shortcomings, I have had better value for money here than in Switzerland or Indonesia, the other places I have needed medical assistance. Confounder: I am a citizen of Australia.
1 Private health insurance
Public health insurance is pretty good and relatively simple. The complication is that tax incentives encourage people to take out private health insurance. At certain income brackets, it might make private health cover a good deal. Maybe. In practice it is complicated.
E.g. What is a “Bronze” policy? Why do Silver Plus health insurance policies exist? etc.
To even evaluate policies, you must read lots of fine print and understand much complicated jargon and tedious taxonomies. The time cost of this should probably go into any evaluation of this value. I have just spent 4 hours reading policy guides, for example.
According to Canstar, the Not-For-Profit Health Insurance Providers with public enrollment are
- Australian Unity
- Frank Health Insurance
- GMHBA
- HBF
- HCF
- HIF (These H[.]F folks must be pissed at how often they get each other’s mail)
- Health Partners
- Hunter Health
- Latrobe
- Mildura Health Fund
- Peoplecare
- Phoenix Health Fund
- St Lukes
- Westfund
New addition: Union Health is a new fund targeting enrolled union members.