What health insurance costs

Health insurance pays for private medical treatment — surgery, specialists, diagnostic tests, and in some policies drugs that are not funded by Pharmac. Unlike life cover, it is not a fixed promise for a fixed premium. It is a rolling arrangement that gets repriced, usually annually.

That is the fact that most affects the cost over time. A health premium at 40 gives you very little information about the premium at 70, because it moves with your age and with the insurer’s claims experience across the whole book. It is the cover most likely to become unaffordable at exactly the age it is most useful.

We do not publish premium figures for health insurance. The New Zealand data sources we rely on cover life insurance, and inventing a health premium range would be exactly the sort of made-up number this site exists to avoid.

The trade-off most people get wrong

Faced with a rising premium, the instinct is to drop the extras — specialists, tests, non-Pharmac drug cover — and keep the hospital cover. That is often the right call financially, but understand what you are dropping. The specialist and diagnostic layer is what gets you seen and diagnosed quickly, and non-Pharmac drug cover is what funds treatments the public system does not.

These are the details that decide whether the cover does what you expected. Read them before you compare on price.

• Whether the premium is age-banded, and what happens at the next band.
• How pre-existing conditions are defined and whether any can be reviewed after a period of good health.
• Whether non-Pharmac drug cover is included, capped, or absent.
• Whether there is a maximum age for cover, or for joining.
• Whether an employer is paying the premium, since employer-paid health cover generally has fringe benefit tax consequences.
• What changing insurer would cost you — a new insurer applies new underwriting, so conditions covered under your current policy may be excluded.

Every New Zealand insurer writes what life insurance costs in nz to its own wording, and the words are where the money is. Two policies that look identical on price can pay very differently when it matters. Closing that gap is the entire job of an adviser.

• Switching health insurers restarts pre-existing condition exclusions, which is the trap in shopping health cover on price.
• Adjusting the excess and the cover level usually saves more than changing insurer, and carries none of the underwriting risk.
• Where an employer scheme is ending, moving to a personal policy has continuity rules worth understanding before the group cover stops.
• An adviser can model what the same cover looks like at 65 and 75, which is the number that actually decides whether you keep it.

There are three ways to buy life cover in New Zealand, and they are not equivalent. You can buy direct from one insurer, which means you see one product range and one underwriting appetite. You can buy through your bank, which usually means a single insurer’s product sold under the bank’s brand, often with narrower definitions. Or you can go through an adviser, who quotes several insurers at once and is required to put your interests first.

The premium you pay is the same either way. Insurers build adviser commission into their pricing whether or not an adviser is involved, so going direct does not get you a discount — it just removes the person whose job is to argue your corner at application and at claim time.

• An adviser can see which insurer is currently taking your health history on standard terms, and which one will load or exclude it.
• An adviser can structure cover across two insurers if that produces a better outcome than putting everything with one.
• An adviser handles the underwriting back-and-forth, and is the person who chases the claim when a family is least able to.
• An adviser has to document why the recommendation suits you, which is a written record you can hold them to.

We are a referral service, not an insurer. We do not quote premiums and we do not sell policies. What we do is put you in front of one licensed New Zealand adviser who can compare the market properly.

1. 1

   You tell us what you are looking at

   The form takes about a minute. Nobody asks for your medical history on a web form — that conversation happens with the adviser, properly, and only once you have decided to proceed.

2. 2

   An adviser calls you

   A licensed New Zealand adviser talks through your situation: who depends on you, what you owe, what you already have in place, and what you are actually worried about.

3. 3

   They compare the market

   The adviser quotes across the major insurers, checks which of them will take your health history on the best terms, and puts the options side by side in writing.

4. 4

   You decide, in your own time

   There is no obligation and no cost to you. If the answer is that you already have enough cover, a good adviser will tell you that.