My soon to be 21yo just got diagnosed type 1 at xmas. Due to his age he's also about to come off my insurance I believe.
Anyone with diabetes found any particular health insurer better ?
TBH not really sure of its value as all of his day to day needs are pretty much free.
Thanks
Cheers. That's who I'm currently with.
I kicked my last offspring off at age 21 because I rated the extra cost too high. In your case it may be worthwhile.
Private health is really more around timely access to elective procedures, or a more comfortable stay for unplanned hospital admissions. Over time as a type 1 diabetic you’d have increased risk of hospitalisation so may be worth it.
For diabetes since April in 2023 Medicare partially covers continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), via the National Diabetes Support Scheme but I think maybe only the Dexomms and Freestyles at the moment, and you'd still be up for around $30/month. He'd have to be using insulin already (which I presume if he has a diagnosis he is) and there are some hoops to jump through.
I assume he'd still need to get that, and the private insurance would cover the subsidised rate. But I'm not diabetic, so I don't know.
The Freestyle stuff has been free. The $100 subsidy for each sensor dropped the price to $0. The needles were also free.
The only cost so far was $60 to fill a 50 pen prescription.
The CGM is a constant monitor that attaches to your arm (technically anywhere, but most people pick arm) it polls every few seconds and will store data for about 8 hours on the monitor itself, but is capable of syncing to your phone or the sensor. The newer ones will even do a push alert for sugar spikes and crashes. Each sensor lasts about 2 weeks.
It saves having to prick yourself multiple times a day, but without the subsidy they are prohibitively expensive.
Thankfully he was on these from day 1.
Having Diabetics is a norm, if you can control it, you can stay as normal. You don't get much benfiites from private health. Probably better sign up with NDSS as mention above.
But uncontrolled Diabetics can caused other issues such as heart conditions, now thats a different story.
My take as a fellow carer of a newly diagnosed Type 1 Diabetic is that the major advantage of private health (because most things are well-covered by NDSS) is when you want to move from daily injections to a pump. My son's endocrinologist is not letting that happen until at least 12 months after diagnosis, but there's a public waiting list for pumps anyway. Having a high level of private healthcare means you can get thousands of dollars worth of pump paid for (most policies don't include insulin pumps). The catch is that I had to increase our family's level of cover with AIA and there's a waiting list for the pump to be covered. I have read, though, that the pump manufacturers will sometimes defer the payment until someone's health insurance becomes available.
Just posting to agree with hedge. You want private insurance to cover the bulk of the pump's cost. If you're going to have private insurance regardless then pay the extra for pump cover. As last I checked an insulin pump is like $7-8k. If you only want insurance for a pump then you might be better off just putting the money into a high interest account :)
With my limited knowledge all I can see insurance useful for atm is to cover the pump cost, but my son is miles off moving on to a pump being a newbie.
The NDSS cover is absolutely amazing so may suffice then for the foreseeable future.
Just remember to factor in the waiting periods when he does become ready for a pump so that you have cover taken out as least twelve months before. Closer to 18 months might even be safer, just in case of an emergency.
I'm with NIB. If your child is studying full-time and under 25, you can keep them covered on your policy for no extra cost; or if they've finished studying, they can stay on your policy until they turn 31 for an extra charge on your premium.