Health insurance, made simple.

Health insurance is mainly about getting private treatment quickly, without waiting on the public list. Most policies centre on private hospital and surgical care — operations, specialist consultations, tests and scans, and the hospital stay itself.

Many policies let you add extras, like cover toward GP visits, dental, optical, physio and prescriptions, usually for a higher premium.

The headline benefit most people are buying is speed and choice: seeing a specialist in weeks rather than months, and having treatment when you need it rather than when a waitlist allows. What's covered varies by policy, so the wording is what counts, not a general summary.

It's a fair question, and the answer depends on how you'd feel waiting.

New Zealand's public system is genuinely good for emergencies and serious, urgent care — if you're in a car accident or have a heart attack, the public system looks after you well, and health insurance isn't what gets you treated.

Where it earns its place is the non-urgent but life-affecting stuff: the hip that needs replacing, the knee surgery, the specialist referral, the scan to rule something out. These can sit on public waitlists for months or longer, often while you're in pain or unable to work.

So the real question isn't whether the public system exists — it's whether you'd want the option to skip the queue when it matters. For a lot of people, that peace of mind is the whole point.

It depends on your age, whether you smoke, the level of cover you choose, and the excess you pick. Age is the biggest driver, and premiums rise as you get older because claims become more likely.

A hospital-and-surgical-only policy costs less than a comprehensive one with GP, dental and optical extras. Choosing a higher excess lowers the premium.

We won't quote a figure here, because any number would be misleading without knowing your situation. If you want a real one, we'll get you actual quotes across insurers so you can see the trade-offs.

Hospital-and-surgical cover is the core: private operations, specialists, tests and hospital stays. It's what protects you from the big, expensive events, and it's where most of the real value sits.

Comprehensive cover adds the everyday extras on top — GP visits, dental, optical, physio, prescriptions — up to set limits.

The everyday extras are nice to have, but they're often capped, so you can end up paying premiums to claim back small amounts. Many people prioritise strong hospital cover first, because that's the cost that could actually derail them, and add extras only if the budget allows. Which mix is right depends on your situation.

Usually not the conditions you already have, at least not at the start. When you take out cover, the insurer looks at your health history and will typically exclude existing conditions, or place them under review.

Some insurers will reconsider certain conditions after a period with no symptoms or treatment, and occasionally cover them later. It varies a lot between insurers, which is one reason advice helps.

The practical takeaway: the best time to take out health insurance is while you're healthy, before conditions appear and get excluded. And as with every insurance application — disclose everything. Leaving something out is the fastest way to have a claim declined.

An excess is the amount you agree to pay yourself toward a claim before the insurer pays the rest — much like a car insurance excess.

Choosing a higher excess lowers your premium, sometimes significantly, because you're taking on more of the smaller costs yourself. A lower excess costs more each month but means less out of pocket at claim time.

The sensible way to think about it: pick an excess you could comfortably cover if you had to claim tomorrow. If you've got some savings to absorb it, a higher excess is often an efficient way to keep premiums down without giving up the cover that matters.

Generally yes, and it's worth understanding why so it doesn't come as a shock.

Two things push health premiums up over time. First, age — as you get older, treatment becomes more likely, so premiums rise. Second, the rising cost of healthcare itself, as new treatments and technology get more expensive.

This is normal across all insurers, not a sign yours is treating you unfairly. What matters is holding cover that stays good value as it rises, and reviewing it periodically. We help people check their cover still fits rather than just absorbing increases year after year.

Only if you have those extras included. The core of most policies is hospital and surgical cover, which doesn't include everyday GP, dental or optical.

You can usually add an everyday-health option that contributes toward GP visits, dental check-ups, glasses, physio and prescriptions, up to annual limits.

Whether it's worth it comes down to how much you'd actually claim. For some families it pays for itself; for others the limits are low enough that strong hospital cover plus paying small costs directly makes more sense. It's worth doing the sums rather than assuming.

Yes. Most insurers let you cover partners and children on one plan, and children are often relatively inexpensive to add.

Each person is still assessed for their own health history, so an exclusion on one family member doesn't affect the others' cover.

Covering children while they're young and healthy is worth thinking about, because it locks in cover before any conditions appear that might later be excluded. As with any cover, the details vary by insurer, so it's worth comparing rather than defaulting to one.

Employer schemes can be great value, and often accept you with fewer health questions, which is genuinely useful if your health history would otherwise mean exclusions.

The catch is that the cover is tied to the job. If you leave or are made redundant, it usually stops, and taking out a new personal policy at that point means a fresh health assessment — by which time you may have conditions that get excluded.

Some insurers let you transfer from a group scheme to a personal policy on similar terms, which is worth knowing before you need it. If you've got cover through work, understand exactly what happens to it if the job ends — that's the gap that catches people out.