Do children need medical insurance?

Do children need medical insurance?
Apr 10, 2018

With GP visits free to children under 13, we are often asked whether getting medical insurance for your healthy, active children is necessary?

As advisers dealing with claims, we feel the answer is a resounding YES. Kids do often need surgery and long waits on the public system are hard to deal with as a parent, especially when it can be affecting your child developmentally, which can be the case with issues such as grommets.

As grandparents, we also want the confidence of giving our children the security of knowing that their kids can have access to the treatment they need, as and when needed. 

Here are the points to consider: 

  1. It is something to protect their future. You can set them up for later in life and let’s be honest, who knows what the public health system will look like ten or twenty years from now 

  2. Protection against pre-existing conditions. One of the big issues we see for adults taking out medical insurance later in life is the issue of pre-existing conditions. In simple terms, this is a health issue that exists before you apply for a policy and which may be excluded. If you insure your children while they are young, fit and healthy, they will not have any pre-existing conditions when their cover transfers to an adult policy, later in life. 

  3. Access to cover, no matter how public funding changes. None of us can predict how access to public treatment will change over future years but we can probably guess that it won’t be for the better.

    With an ageing population, the reality is that any Government is going to struggle to maintain current funding levels, let alone increase them, therefore the way we can access public healthcare may well change in the future.

  4. Access to non-Pharmac funded drugs. This means that if, god forbid, your child became ill, they would have access to the drugs which would give them the best treatment and recovery chances, rather than relying on the District Health Board funded drugs. This is extremely important (especially when it comes to cancer treatments) and avoids parents having to self-fund extremely expensive drugs. 


So how much does medical insurance for a child cost? Well for my 18 month old granddaughter’s medical cover (with a $500 excess) I pay just $3.77 a week, that’s less than a coffee! 

Want to talk to someone about insurance for your family? 

To get in touch with Mike and Amanda, please call (06) 751 4510 or email [email protected] This article is generic information and not personalised advice.