Health Insurance

With private health insurance there's no need to wait; get timely diagnosis and effective treatment right away.

In New Zealand we are very fortunate to have an excellent public health system with reasonably quick access to quality urgent or emergency care.

However, for anything considered non-urgent or elective, which can include major health issues, timely diagnosis and effective treatment can easily become significantly delayed, incredibly expensive, or both.

Private health insurance allows you to leapfrog the waitlists of the public system (which can be as much as two years at times) and access quality care straightaway. With a range of benefits, excesses and options to cover surgery and hospitalisation, specialist and diagnostic costs, and even GP, optical and dental benefits, talk to us about how private health insurance can work for you.

In addition there are costly and medically approved, cutting-edge cancer drugs not currently funded by Pharmac. You may have heard of Herceptin and Keytruda - in the several years before Pharmac funded these drugs, patients who opted to undergo these treatments had to meet the costs themselves.

Is health insurance really necessary?

While we are fortunate to have an excellent public health system, increasing demand often means that anything non-urgent requires being put on a waitlist to receive treatment. There have even been instances in recent years where patients are waiting unreasonably long times for specialist consultations or diagnostic investigations and, of great concern, for cancer treatments such as chemotherapy.

Ten years ago, your GP would likely have advised that health insurance is kind of a luxury item that you’re probably fine without. Today they’d probably advise that health insurance is practically a must-have item that you should get if you can, while you can. I'm happy to chat with you about the various health insurance options.

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