The pandemic has disrupted all sorts of things, and one of them is the usual cycle of our household bills.<\/p>\n
Health insurance usually goes up in April, energy bills usually go up in January or July, depending on your state. If interest rates change, they usually do so slowly and steadily. But not this year.<\/p>\n
After big energy price increases stretching from May to August, and five rate rises in a row, more than 10 million households are about to get a health insurance hike, too. These are the premium increases that were due in April but deferred by most health funds.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After being frozen in April, Australians are about to be hit with a health insurance rise.<\/span>Credit:<\/span>Michael Mucci <\/cite><\/p>\n The premium rise holiday couldn\u2019t last forever, and now \u2013 like the petrol tax returning tomorrow \u2013 it\u2019s about to come home to roost for customers of a dozen health funds.<\/p>\n On October 1, GMHBA, Frank, TUH, Teachers Health, UniHealth and Nurses & Midwives Health, and Peoplecare will all lift their rates. This will be followed by Bupa, Medibank, AHM, HCF and NIB, which will raise their rates on November 1.<\/p>\n Those last five funds alone cover more than 10 million Australians and will increase premiums by an average of 2.66 per cent (NIB), 2.72 per cent (HCF), 3.10 per cent (Medibank\/AHM) and 3.18 per cent (Bupa). On a $5000 family policy, this will add between $133 to $159 a year.<\/p>\n These are the lowest average increases in 21 years, but the average hike over those years is now 5.3 per cent each year. A $2000-a-year policy when Kevin Rudd was elected would now cost more $4100 a year under the Albanese government. Here are a few things you can do about it:<\/p>\n Special offers: <\/b>There has been a boom in incentives for switchers, and you can now get up to eight weeks free or $800 in cashback. Because there\u2019s a legislated 12 per cent cap on discounts, health funds have started spreading the \u201ccarrots\u201d over the first two years of a policy.<\/p>\n Pre-pay hack:<\/b> If you can pay your annual premium in advance for a year before the price hike kicks in, you\u2019ll pay the current price, not the higher price \u2013 effectively deferring the increase for another year.<\/p>\n HCF even allows you to pre-pay up to 18 months (as far as I\u2019m aware, it\u2019s the only fund to do so), which means their customers can postpone their hike until as late as April 2024.<\/p>\n Cover review: <\/b>Under the new system, every policy must be categorised as gold, silver, bronze, or basic, and there are certain treatments that each category must include (listed at privatehealth.gov.au). You can use this list to downgrade and save if you don\u2019t need all the cover at your current level \u2013 or to compare two plans from different providers and see if one is hundreds of dollars cheaper. Removing pregnancy cover, for example, if you\u2019re done having kids, might save about $500 a year.<\/p>\n The law protects you if switching to a similar level of cover or downgrading \u2013 you don\u2019t have to serve your waiting periods all over again with a new provider.<\/p>\n Other tweaks:<\/b> Increasing your excess to $750 for a single or $1500 for a couple can cut your premium by hundreds. So can splitting it into two policies if one of you needs a higher level of cover than the other, or has a much higher lifetime health cover loading. Also bear in mind that there\u2019s no financial penalty for dumping the \u201cextras\u201d part of your policy, if you\u2019re not using it enough. It\u2019s only the hospital part of a policy that is connected to certain taxes and loadings.<\/p>\n