Health cover that suits you

Also known as health cover, health insurance is an umbrella term for the types of insurances available to help cover your healthcare costs in Australia: hospital insurance and extras insurance.

Hospital insurance

Also known as hospital cover, hospital insurance helps cover some of the costs when you're admitted to hospital. It can help cover some of the costs for things like doctors' fees, accommodation and theatre fees.

Extras insurance

Also known as ancillary cover or extras cover, extras insurance helps cover some or all of the costs for everyday healthcare services including things like dental check-ups, physio appointments and glasses or contacts. These services are generally not covered by Medicare.

With HBF, you can choose to purchase hospital or extras insurance on their own, or you can buy both to create a combined policy.

Learn more:

• What is extras insurance?
• What is hospital insurance?

Also known as hospital cover, hospital insurance helps cover costs when you're admitted to hospital. It covers things like your doctors' fees, accommodation and theatre fees.

Learn more about hospital cover

Also known as ancillary cover or extras cover, extras insurance helps cover the cost of everyday healthcare services including things like dental check-ups, physio appointments and glasses or contacts. These services are generally not covered by Medicare.

Learn more about extras cover

You can get health cover for yourself, you and your partner, or for your whole family. Generally, there are four categories of membership:

• 1 adult (single)
• 2 adults (couple)
• 2 adults and any number of dependant^* children (family)
• 1 adult and any number of dependant^* children (single parent)

Your kids can stay on your policy if they meet the criteria of a dependant.

A dependant is a child who is under the age of 21 and is:

• covered by a family or single parent policy; and
• is not married or living in a de-facto relationship.

At HBF we also choose to cover dependants under 25 years of age provided they meet the criteria in the 2 points noted above and they:

• are a full-time student; or
• earn no more than $24,500 taxable income per calendar year.

No. HBF, like most health funds, have a 12-month waiting period for pregnancy and birth. Waiting periods help to discourage people from signing up for health cover, claiming and leaving soon after, which drives premiums up for all other members of the health fund.

HBF is a not-for-profit health fund. A not-for-profit uses any money it makes to further its business objectives and cover the cost of running the business, like paying utilities bills and staff. Any surplus earnings (profits) are also used to help further the not-for-profit's mission.

For-profit businesses have the same overheads as not-for-profits, however they use some or all profits to pay shareholders or investors.

In Australia, insurance is either 'community rated' or 'risk rated'. Health insurance is 'community rated'. Community rating is part of private health insurance legislation and dictates that everyone living in the same state is entitled to get private health insurance and pay the same base price for the same health insurance policies. This means health funds cannot set a person's health insurance premium using individual factors like age, gender, lifestyle or physical condition.

No, HBF do not pay commissions to insurance comparison websites to sell our health cover. We prefer to connect with you right from the start to make sure you get the right cover for your individual needs. Not paying a third party also means that we can focus keeping your premiums low.