Restricted services are treatments that your health insurer will over pay a limited benefit towards. This means you'll likely have out of pocket expenses. Since the 2019 private health insurance reforms, all health funds must offer restricted cover for rehabilitation, hospital psychiatric services and palliative care.
With a covered services, your health insurer will pay the full benefit towards the cost of treatment – so long as it's listed on your hospital cover policy. This means that when you're treated as a private patient in a private hospital, medicare will generally pay 75% of the MBS costs and your private health insurance will pay the remaining 25%.
Any hospital treatment can have restricted cover on a particular policy, However, the most common restricted services include:
This is generally because all health insurers are required to offer restricted cover for these treatments. In most cases, you won't find them fully covered until you get gold level cover.
Restricted services generally mean you'll have significantly larger out of pocket expenses. This is because you won't be covered for the full cost of treatment.
Even if the service is fully covered by your health fund though, you might still have out of pocket expenses. This is because private hospital insurance generally pays the remaining 25% of the MBS fee – Medicare covers the other 75%. However, medical professionals in the private system are not obligated to adhere to the MBS fee. If they charge more, you might have to pay the difference, unless you have no gap cover.
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