Can someone help me find a suitable Private Hospital Fund?

Hi Juniperzelda,

I can't give you any guidance about the best health insurance fund for your circumstances. You might try running comparisons through the iselect website and seeing what comes up. http://www.iselect.com.au/

My fund was Australian Health Management. As far as I know they're still funding sleeves on the lowest tier of hospital cover, but they've just notified us that they're not going to be funding bands after July.

I can tell you not to worry about Opti-fast yet. This is because your surgery date will probably be 12 months away if you wait to qualify through whichever fund you choose. Opti-fast comes into play in the last weeks before surgery. Then your surgeon may ask you to go on a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) -- usually Opti-fast -- for some weeks (usually 2 weeks, sometimes longer) in order to reduce abdominal fat as much as possible (to make surgery easier) and, most importantly, to strip fat out of your liver, so that it's lighter to lift out of the way, and less brittle.

Good luck!

Dark

Hi =)

I pay $50something a month for my PHI, and that includes extra's - dental, remedial massage and optical. I'm with medibank private, who is still covering both banding and sleeves on the lowest hospital cover. I have singles cover.
Optifast is a quick way of getting your body into ketosis and thus helps your body to strip off some fat around your liver before surgery. If your liver has too much fat around it, surgeons will close you up and not operate, therefore the opti gives you max chance of a successful outcome.
All the best =)

Hi,
I am a complete novice and I am on a Disability Support Pension as my only source of income. I have just been looking through the Private Health websites and am now totally confused as to what to choose. Do they make it purposely difficult as they are all sadists? Applesauce told me I could expect to pay around $60 per month,for hospital cover only, which I should be able to manage, but choosing the right company and cover is the biggest problem as there are so many options and it all just totally confuses me. Also I see Optifast mentioned a lot in these pages. Is this an obligatory step to having the surgery s a kind of "clean out"?

If someone can assist me I would greatly appreciate it ok?

Cheers,

Juniperzelda