Maybe when I get old I'll get health insurance, but right now, bullocks to spending money on insurance.
I've never bothered with health insurance but have always been a dedicated saver. When I needed a couple of minor ops blowed if I was going to wait in a queue, I paid for em on the day of the operation in a private hospital. I think the only thing that would catch me out would be needing expensive cancer treatment long term. Having said that if you're thinking about it after having the responsibility of a family you need to save ten of thousand before going off health insurance.
People who can afford health insurance but choose not to, relying on the public system to provide should not be on the SS site. They remind me of the sheeple that depend on the government to take care of them. What people don't understand is that if you are on the public waiting list for surgery then you will probably be operated on by a registrar who may have done 1 or 2 such operations before, or a consultant who breezes in and lets the registrar finish off while he heads off to his private practice. You may be cancelled or lost in the system - the public system has so many cracks its easy to fall in one. Doctors today are not the caring individuals of the past, they are no longer the brightest of us but what they are taught very well is empathy and communication. That is to generate the warm fuzzy feeling while the cancer eats you from within and costs the system as little as possible. With insurance you can pick the doctor and you can get another opinion and you can decide your own future. That is why we collect PM ! Government health care has been a universal failure. Look at the British NHS the largest employer in the world after the Indian railways. Most of the employees are managers and bean counters. Doctor and nurse to patient ratio's have never been lower. You think its different here in Oz, take it from someone who know the system very very well is no different. Do your self a favour and get health insurance if you can afford it.
Then there are people like me who wouldn't be caught dead using any gov service for my health under any circumstances, and also wouldn't be caught dead paying for health insurance. Let me die without giving them a cent and without anyone giving me a cent. If I have to pay for something and can afford it, let me do so out of my own pocket.
I paid insurance premiums for all of my life and claimed on them as & when I needed... over time I've come to find the companies issuing 'insurance' to be less & less transparent - so now I only insure my car, medibank top-up, my life & my wife's life... and I save a shedload of $ in the process... I've come to feel that insurance is a bit of an overpriced scam... Which is actually very unlike me, isn't it?!?!?! VRS X
For peace of mind, for the love of god, keep your health insurance - not having health insurance is playing with fire. 1 thing gone wrong and it can wipe you out - physically (God fordbid) or financially. Keep the insurance, it's worth the cost. What is a couple of grand compared to your life? I know what is worth more to me.
What the??? Is insurance not a "banking product"..... Forget the health insurance. Insurance is really the a classic fiat banking product isn't it. a kind of "we promise to help pay" if there is absolutely no possibility of getting out of it, just as long as too many problems don't occur at the same time, because we can't afford to pay for you all. People who pay tax towards the public system have a right to respectable health care relative to the tax dollars I have paid. As soon as the government allows me to "opt out" I will happily take responsibility for my own healthcare funding. In the meantime I feel like paying premium to big insurance companies is just another form of investing in the fiat system. Have seen first hand here in NZ this past year one big insurer AMI have to be bailed out after they didn't have the funds to pay out their responsibilities on Christchurch Earthquake damage. Putting money into an insurance company is taking a gamble that the company will be around when I need them, that the government will be in a position to bail them out if claims exceed their bank balance. All based on a fiat dollar that is losing value every day. Putting this investment in PM's instead is a no brainier to me.
1. So what if it's a banking product, just because it's a banking product doesn't mean it's bad. Not everything related to banking is bad, only those with tinfoil pulled over their head so hard that it's melded with their brains thinks everything is bad. 2. Yeah we pay tax towards a public health system, and guess what, it's not respectable. How do we hedge this risk? We pay a private health company so that when my left nut sack gets sawn off in a hedge trimming accident I can get my kids reattached without having to wait in line. 3. So what if they got bailed out? It means they got money from the government to pay for the $700k that just got flattened. The insurance policy holders still win. Let's weigh up the situations that could have happened: - You pay a few hundred bucks a year for insurance for your home, it gets flattened, you get $700k back. - You don't pay for insurance and oh snap, you just lost 700k. 4. So what if those Big Mac binges caught up to you and you needed a triple bypass which costs skywards of $120k? Let's weigh up the situations that could unfold: - You pay a few hundred bucks a year for insurance for your health, you get flattened, you get surgery and you live. - You don't pay for insurance and oh snap you just lost your home to pay for your surgery. BBQ, if you are baller enough to have a couple of hundred K just sitting around, and don't mind losing it because of natural disasters, then good on ya mate. 5. Fiat money has nothing to do with insurance, I don't even know how you managed to mix and shake that together.
I have neither. I don't consider myself particularly brave either. Disasters will always happen, but I think the biggest disaster is living in fear and expecting criminals to save you. If none of us took out insurance, there'd be enough money pooled up amongst our own families and communities to get through any disaster. The odds are far in our favour.
But the odds aren't and it never will be. I know for a fact I am not willing to have more than 20k in liquid cash, let alone 700k in case I need surgery or my house gets flattened. The investment returns and gains I will get from that cash far outweighs the cost of insurance. Now if you include your families and "communities", the risks have just multiplied to the sky, at least with insurance there is a contract bound by law which they have to follow (or try wiggle out of). Live in the moment and be aware of your environment - it might not be ideal but unless you adapt you will fail. Whether you need insurance can easily be answered by this question - do you have enough money today to pay for surgery or a new house? If you don't, you buy insurance. Doesn't matter if they are crooks - it's doing what's best for you that matters.
For peace of mind, I think private health insurance is very important. Just don't want to end up having my loved ones worrying about paying for my medical expense in case of serious illness . We never know, I've seen friends who is healthy and as young in their 30s/40s diagnosed with serious illness without insurance covered, the financial burden and stress are huge. I think, sometimes it's just not about myself, but considering for the closed ones around me.
And wiggling out of it they do, even if you have insurance. Plenty of people, they don't care if you die. I disagree here. Adapting to me is not dealing with criminals as much as possible. Your conclusion sounds like everyone is set up for failure without health insurance. I disagree. Doing the best for me is not dealing with criminals. So even if I had to go out tomorrow, I'd go out tomorrow with a smile knowing that I never paid a cent to them I don't tend to do things I don't believe in. I don't feed the beast wherever possible.
Well pray to God that you don't get sick or your house doesn't get engulfed in a volcano, because if it does happen, I hope you have some epic family members who won't mind putting everything on the line to pick you back up.
Heh. I don't worry about these things. Like I say, the odds are well in our favour. The reason insurance companies make gobs of money is our fear. With that money, they invest in god-knows-what to make the world far worse than it is, all for their monetary gain, again. They swindle millions on insurance. They play dirty tricks. I am not comfortable with enriching them and their path of destruction, so I am at peace with my decision
I think so? But you can get natural disaster cover can't you? I bloody well hope a volcano won't erupt underneath Sydney, that would really suck. BBQ: Fair enough, I respect your stance on the matter.
I was under the impression the healthcare system in Australia is quite good. Here in Canada its far from perfect however I know if something happens to me I can get to a hospital and get decent care at no additional cost, I might have to wait a couple weeks months for a non life threatening procedure but I've never even considered private insurance. In my oipinion if you're a productive citizen and pay tax government infrastructure should take care of your health care. That's the reason we pay taxes in the first place, for essential services, and what's more essential than your health? Without good health all the 400 oz. Gold bars in the world aint worth a damn thing!.
I didn't mean to suggest that I was just going to skip insurance, put the annual fees on the melbourne cup each year and hope the public system looks after everything for me. I meant putting the money aside in PM (or something else?) so it's there if it's needed. I have access to money in the event that something drastic happens but even with private insurance not every cent is covered and you're still out of pocket. People talk like not having private insurance means you just miss out which isn't right. My dad didn't have insurance when he was getting an op done so he paid cash and skipped the queue the same as anyone with insurance. I like the comparison of insurance to gambling. If the payout is 105:1 and the chances are 1 in 100 then it makes sense, if the payout is 95:1 then it doesn't.
