Welcome to Australian Unity

There are two types of private health insurance:

• Hospital insurance, which covers all or some of the costs of hospital treatment as a private patient including doctor’s charges and hospital accommodation.
• Extras insurance (also called ancillary), which covers treatments generally not available under Medicare like dental, optical, physiotherapy, chiropractic and acupuncture.

You can purchase hospital-only insurance, extras-only insurance, or combined hospital plus extras cover.

As a general rule, the more expensive the health cover you choose, the more hospital procedures and extras treatments will be included and the more money you’ll get back when you claim.

When you first buy private health insurance, or when you upgrade to a higher level of cover, you may have to wait some time before you are able to claim. These waiting periods apply to both hospital and extras.

Most private health funds recognise the waiting periods you’ve served with your previous insurer. That means that when you transfer to a level of insurance with the same (or lower) level of cover, as long as you transfer within 30 days of leaving your previous fund, you won’t need to re-serve waiting periods that you’ve already completed.

Yes. If you would like a partner, friend or relative to speak to Australian Unity on your behalf and manage your membership, you can either:

• Fill out this delegated authority form
• Call us on 1800 760 719

The person you nominate will then be able to access and update your personal information—both over the phone and online. You will remain the only one who can change your level of cover or cancel your insurance.

Yes. You can change pivate health insurance policies at any time: from one fund to another or even changing to a higher or lower level of cover within the same health fund.

You’ll receive continuous cover if you transfer to Australian Unity within 30 days of leaving your previous fund. And if you switch to an equal (or lower) level of cover, you won’t have to re-serve any waiting periods you’ve already completed.

The old fund will provide your new fund with a transfer certificate, which provides details about your level of cover, waiting periods already served, a history of recent claims, and any Lifetime Health Cover loading that applies.

This information may also be used to adjust the annual and lifetime claim limits on your new policy. For example, if you’ve made $900 worth of orthodontics claims on your old cover, and your new policy has a $2400 lifetime claim limit, that $900 will be deducted from your new policy ($2400 - $900 = $1500) to reflect your true available limit.

Find out more about switching to Australian Unity.

When you take out private health insurance for the first time, or when you increase your level of cover (including reducing your excess level), you’ll need to serve a waiting period before you can claim on some treatments.

This helps to keep insurance premiums lower because it stops people from making a large claim shortly after joining, and then cancelling their membership straight away.

The Australian federal government sets the maximum waiting periods that funds can impose for hospital treatment, including 12 months for pre-existing conditions and for obstetrics (pregnancy), and two months for rehabilitation and palliative care.

If you're 31 or over, you might have to pay an extra 2% loading for each year you've gone without hospital cover.

The Lifetime Health Cover (LHC) loading was introduced by the Australian Government in July 2000 to encourage people to take out private hospital insurance at a younger age and maintain it over time.

Find out whether LHC affects you.