If you’ve had both private health insurance and public health insurance coverage simultaneously, there may come a time when you decide to retroactively cancel your private health insurance. However, it’s important to understand the potential consequences of backdating your cancellation.
What does it mean to "backdate" the cancellation of a private health insurance?
Backdating your private health insurance cancellation means setting the cancellation date to a point in the past. This is sometimes requested when individuals realise they’ve been paying for both private and public health insurance unnecessarily. In many cases, it is possible to request a backdated cancellation, especially if you’ve been covered under public health insurance during the same period.
What are the consequences?
If you’ve submitted medical bills and received reimbursements from your private health insurance, and then request to backdate the cancellation, the private insurer will ask you to repay any reimbursements received for the period after the backdated cancellation date.
The reason this repayment is required is that once your policy is successfully backdated, your private health insurance would no longer have been active during that period.
If repayment is required, we will reach out to you with details about how to complete this transfer.
If your physician accepts public health insured patients, you could try to submit the claim through your public insurance.
If you backdate the cancellation of your private health insurance and have received reimbursements for claims made after that date, you will be required to repay those reimbursements. It’s crucial to carefully consider whether backdating is the right decision for you, especially if you’ve submitted claims during the period in question.