Australian Unity

Overseas visitors aren’t eligible for Medicare benefits unless they’re from a country Australia has a Reciprocal Health Care Agreement with. For those that do, they aren’t eligible for the full array of Medicare benefits.

Often, holding an appropriate level of health insurance is a visa requirement. Australian Unity’s overseas visitors cover includes doctor and specialist fees, emergency ambulance and hospital treatment, accommodation, and theatre fees for international visitors.

Under some visas, you may be required to meet condition 8501. Condition 8501 means that you must have and maintain adequate health insurance for the whole of your stay in Australia. All Australian Unity working visitors policies meet condition 8501. None of its current non-working visitor covers meet this requirement.

Australian Unity offer members a choice of flexible ways to make a claim:

• On the spot: If your extras provider has a HICAPS machine, you can swipe your Australian Unity membership card at the time of payment to make a claim on the spot.
• Using the Australian Unity mobile app: Upload photos of your receipts using the mobile app, or via the Australian Unity website if you like to keep your smartphone apps streamlined.
• Over the phone: If you’d like help completing your claim form, you can call 13 29 39 for assistance.
• By mail, email, or fax: Once you’ve completed a claim form and attached your receipts, you can post, email, or fax them through to Australian Unity.

You might be familiar with excesses thanks to other kinds of insurance, like for your car or the last time you took an international holiday. Excesses for health insurance apply when you’d like to be treated as a private patient in hospital, no matter who your insurer is.

You’ll need to pay your excess before you’re admitted to hospital. With the excess paid, your treatment can begin, and your insurer will handle other costs that come up (although you may still have some gaps to pay yourself).

Your policy documents will tell you what your excess is.

Australian Unity lets you pay for your health cover in lots of ways.

For instance, you can set up a direct debit so you don’t have to worry about missing a bill’s due date. Doing so could even get you a 4% discount on your premiums.

If you prefer a more hands-on approach, you can opt to receive regular bills and to pay them via Australian Unity’s mobile app, its web portal, BPAY, or the phone. Depending on the payment frequency you choose, you could net yourself a premium discount of up to 4%.

Waiting periods are how long you’ll need to hold your health insurance cover before you can start claiming. They can be a fair bit longer than your usual extended wait at a GP on a busy Saturday morning, but at least you’ll have more than an old Woman’s Weekly to keep yourself entertained.

For hospital cover, the government has strict rules on the maximum waiting periods insurers can set. Typically, you can’t be left in the lurch for more than two months, unless it’s for a pre-existing condition, or pregnancy or childbirth. In those instances, your wait could be as long as a year.

Insurers have more freedom when it comes to extras waiting periods – these aren’t standardised. You’ll usually see waiting periods vary by the kinds of services covered, as well as by insurer. In Australian Unity’s case, its extras waiting periods tend to range from no wait at all to 12 months. Sometimes, it might even waive the waiting period for certain extras as a special deal.

And what about if you’ve already served your waiting periods with another insurer and you’re looking to move to Australian Unity? If you’re opting for a similar or lower of level of cover and it hasn’t been more than 30 days since you left your previous health insurer, you won’t need to reserve them with Australian Unity. However, if you’re after more cover with Australian Unity than with your previous policy, you may have some waiting periods for any of these new higher benefits.

You can check which waiting periods apply to a policy by reading the policy documents.

Absolutely, just hop online and visit the Australian Unity website. From there, you can log into your online account portal.

Alternatively, you can use the Australian Unity smartphone app.

Whichever method you choose, you can get a full picture of your health insurance and manage your cover, like:

• making a claim
• review past claims
• checking your limits and what you have left
• paying your bills
• updating your details.