Save On Your Health Insurance Before Interest Rates Rise

We’ve just had another interest rate rise (first one in over ten years). This means once your home interest rate rises it will have a massive impact on your household budget. Before we get started talking about how to save on your savings on your private health insurance, here are some great household tips to save money as well (Billy Explores is here to make sure you can save money)

Saving Dollars on Your Health Insurance Policy is Easy

With interest rates rising very soon, it’s never been more important to find ways to save your hard earned dollars. The best news for us Aussies are, there’s plenty of competition around and in some cases unique ways of doing things. There’s something for everyone in the health insurance market, so read on to find out how to save on health insurance before the interest rate increases hit!

Choose Extras Carefully

When you’re comparing health insurance plans and working out how to save on health insurance, take a close look at the extras being offered on each type of plan. You may prefer to lower your premium by choosing no extras at all. However if you do find you use common ones like optical and dental it’s worth including those. If you don’t think you’ll ever use items like acupuncture, naturopathy or physiotherapy, cut them out and save some dollars.

Some plans give you extras in groups, others allow you to fully customise exactly what you pay for. So make sure you are only paying for what you realistically need.

What is Better For Saving On Your Health Insurance? Lower Excess or Lower Premium?

Lots of health insurance providers out there with different benefit structures, one thing always remains the same. If you want to have little or no excess on your claims, you’ll need to pay more each month in your monthly premium.

Billy recommends selecting a health insurance policy with a higher excess and a lower monthly premium, particularly if you are reasonably healthy and don’t expect to be making many claims. Excess can be a bit of an unexpected cost if you do need to go to hospital. However it is probably cheaper than paying high monthly premiums for years waiting for a claim that may never come.

Lock Your Health Insurance Rate

Health insurance premiums generally go up on April 1st each year (or down, but we haven’t seen that for a long time!). This gives you a great opportunity to shop around and potentially save on your health insurance policy or get a better deal for your needs. If you’re happy with your current provider, contact them and ask to pay your premium for 12 months in advance – you may be able to access discounts and save money this way.

Make sure you do this in plenty of time for payment to be processed prior to April 1st. This way you’ll be getting the previous year’s rate for another 12 months. If you pay your annual premium from March, every year you renew it, you’ll be on the previous year’s rate. This beats the new, increased price each year!

Rebates and Surcharges

Depending on your age and taxable income, the Australian government gives a rebate on private health insurance, as it takes some strain off the public health system. When signing up to a new health insurance plan, you have the option of receiving the rebate as a reduction in your monthly premium or get the rebate amount back at tax time.

On top of that, by having private health insurance you may be exempt from paying the Medicare Levy Surcharge in your tax return too – so make sure you have your details handy when lodging your taxes and save yourself some money.

If you think you’re paying too much for your health insurance, there’s help at hand! Billy Explores can show you exactly how you could either save on health insurance and put more money back in your pocket, or get a better value policy for you.

Compare Health Insurance and Potentially Save

Did you know most people stick with the same health insurance provider for years on end (yes it’s true). They think it’s just too hard to shop around and get a better deal (which we all know it’s not).  It always seems prices keep going up and the claimable benefits decrease and it can sometimes feel like you’re being held to ransom by your provider. You don’t have to be – comparing health insurance providers with Billy Explores is easy, you don’t have to worry! All you need to do is check out our health insurance comparison page and through Billy Explores explore potential savings on your health insurance policy.