HIF health insurance

Yes, HIF health insurance offers emergency ambulance cover on all their extras cover products. This means you’ll receive 100% back when you need an emergency trip to the hospital. On their Basic extras cover, you’re limited to one trip per year.

For non-emergency ambulance services, you’re covered on all policies except Basic extras. However, you may need to pay a co-payment depending on the level of cover you choose.

Yes, with HIF health insurance, you will be covered for pre-existing conditions, although you may need to serve a 12-month waiting period before you can claim for hospital services relating to your condition. If you’ve already served a waiting period for your pre-existing condition, you won’t need to serve it again when you switch to HIF.

For extras services, a pre-existing condition won’t affect your waiting periods, so you’re free to claim as soon as you’ve served the standard waiting periods.

Yes, for hospital cover the waiting periods are standard across all health funds. That’s 12 months for pregnancy and birth and pre-existing conditions (excluding rehabilitation, palliative care and psychiatric services) and 2 months for everything else.

For HIF extras services, the waiting periods range between 2-12 months but may vary between policies. Longer waiting periods are typically reserved for more expensive services that are claimed less often. This is to prevent people from signing up and claiming for high-value items only to cancel their policy immediately afterwards, which would increase premiums for everyone else.

When you’re admitted to hospital and claim on your HIF health insurance policy, the hospital will send your bill straight to HIF on your behalf, although you may have to pay an excess on admission. HIF will then arrange the payment of your account and your Medicare benefit. You’ll receive a bill from your provider if there are additional out-of-pocket costs.

For extras services, you can claim on the spot by scanning your HIF membership card at your healthcare provider’s HICAPS machine or through the fast, free and easy-to-use mobile app. You can also fill out a claims form online, by email or through the post.

You can pay your HIF health insurance premiums through direct debit or with a paper invoice payable online, over the phone, at the post office or by mail. You can choose to pay fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annually. You can receive a discount of 4% when you pay annually or 2% when you pay half-yearly.

Yes, you will likely need to pay an excess if you’re admitted to hospital and claim on your HIF private health insurance, although it will depend on your policy. You can also elect to pay a higher excess in exchange for a lower premium. This may be a good idea if you don’t think you’re likely to go to hospital any time soon.

You will typically only need to pay the excess once per person per calendar year.

To cancel your policy, you can fill out an online cancellation form or call the HIF team and they will walk you through the cancellation process. However, if you’re cancelling due to financial hardship you might want to consider suspending your membership instead.

You can suspend your membership up to 12 continuous months if you hold a valid Health Care Card. During this time, you won’t have to pay your premiums and you won’t be covered, but you also won’t accrue days without cover toward the Lifetime Health Cover loading.