(The irony of what I’m writing right now doesn’t escape me as we are on what I call, ‘hospital watch’ with Nixon after a day of vomiting and 2 days without a bowel movement. Fingers crossed x).
I’m sitting here blogging and thinking back to 3 years ago when we had a very sick child. Multiple GP visits had come to nothing and no-one seemed to be quite as concerned as we were about the fact that Nixon hadn’t passed a bowel motion in 45 days. This had been his (and our!) lives for the past 9 months since he was born; obsessing over diaper changes, hoping for action in the downstairs department and fretting constantly over the lack thereof.
After two general anaesthetics and invasive biopsies of his large intestine, he was diagnosed with Hirschsprung’s Disease, a congenital condition meaning (basically) he couldn’t poop.
Shit. Literally lol.
Life with a newborn is frantic, multiplied by 100 when they’re sick. Had I remembered to add Nixon to our health insurance policy? Who knew? Did I remember my failure to do so literally minutes after his diagnosis?
Of course, and that was cool as I totally needed something else to beat myself up about at that time. Not!
My brother and I were fortunate enough to inherit ‘legacy’ health insurance as we moved into adulthood, meaning that my parents had insured us as kids (with no pre-existing conditions) and these policies had been renewed continuously until we took ownership of them in our adult years. Similarly, Ethan has also been insured since birth. Nix obviously has a pre-existing condition (because of the delay in purchasing his insurance), so as Hirschsprung’s is a congenital disease, anything related is excluded for him. Nix receives treatment via the public health system thank goodness, and the kids are both covered for the other great worry in our life – Melanoma.
I only realised the immeasurable value of our health insurance when my Dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma, a horrible battle which he lost after 9 months. Dad’s treatment and condition warranted numerous scans, which to have with any urgency (or without the associated inconvenience of huge wait times and the very real risk to my immune-compromised Dad of spending large amounts of time in a hospital waiting room) would have cost Mum and Dad $1300 for each scan! The mental/emotional support the policy gave our family was a huge relief in a time of massive stress and eventual grief.
So, HECK YES I love health insurance and continue to prioritise its place in our household budget.
This month, I switched the kid’s health insurance to KIDSmart by Accuro. Both of the boys are now insured under a policy customised for kids that does NOT require an adult to be insured. Our old health insurance saw the kids piggy-backed on to my policy without the ability to adjust individual amounts of cover as needed. I found this incredibly frustrating and for parents who want to want to prioritise health insurance for their children but can’t afford the combined expense of an adult policy, this archaic way of issuing cover can make the whole exercise unaffordable and simply too hard.
There are some super cool perks to this kids policy as well, my favourite two are;
- Your child will be charged the Kids Premium Rate until they are 25!
- After 3 years of continuous cover, your child will receive an exercise-based loyalty reimbursement of $150 per year to be used towards school or sports clubs, swimming or dance lessons. How cool is that?!
For a free online quote (it literally takes 5 minutes!), visit KIDSmart by Accuro and find out exactly what they mean when they say they take care of their people when they are healthy and when they’re not doing so well : )
Thanks to Accuro for sponsoring this post!
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