How to Reduce Your Private Health Insurance Premium

You only have five more days before most health insurance providers increase their premiums by around 7% but there is a way you can lock in your current premium and save yourself 7%. If you prepay your health insurance before the 1st of April for a year, you will avoid the increases for the next 12 months.

For us, we also looked at changing our extras cover as we have not used it much, neither have we found having a $250 excess for hospital necessary. Changing from one level to another can save you a significant amount. For example, if your family is on Medibank's Top Excess 85% cover with a $250 excess for hospital, and moved to 55% extras cover with $500 excess for hospital, you will save $70.75 / month (if you don't need to claim). If you can go four months without going to a private hospital (our family has made two public hospital visits but no private hospitals in the last three years), you have your money back. I called up Medibank and this is how much each level of cover is for a family and how much it will change.

Extras cover	before 1 April 2014		after 1 April 2014
	$250 excess	$500 excess	$250 excess	$500 excess
85%	$227.35	$213.35	$245.30	$229.80
70%	$199.35	$185.35	$215.05	$199.60
55%	$170.4	$156.50	$181.70	$166.25

Back to the prepaying, the above plans are all going up by 6.2% - 7.9% on the 1st April. If you prepay on the top level of hospital and extras cover, you will save $215.40.

So which Health Insurance company should you go with? Not sure, but if you have done some research, feel free to leave a comment. But if you switch, always insist on them waiving their no-claim extras periods (hospital cover cannot be waived moving from one provider to another).