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Best extras health insurance policies for your budget

Our insurance experts find the best extras cover for families, seniors, singles and couples.
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Fact-checked

Checked for accuracy by our qualified fact-checkers and verifiers. Find out more about fact-checking at CHOICE

Last updated: 21 Jun 2024
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Our insurance experts have reviewed extras health cover from more than 40 insurers to find the best policies on the market.

Join CHOICE to find out our recommended extras policies for seniors, families, singles and couples below. Unlike other comparison sites, we don’t get paid by any health insurers, so we only recommend the best policies for you.

Who should buy extras?

Extras insurance is for people who want help managing predictable healthcare costs. If you know how much you’re likely to spend on things like dental check-ups, physio sessions and glasses, you can use extras to reduce your out-of-pocket costs. If you claim back more than you spend on the policy, then you’ve got your money’s worth.

Don’t buy extras if you aren’t prepared to put the effort in to claim. If you keep paying your premium and don’t claim it back, it’s the same as that gym membership you never use: a waste of money. 

How health insurance extras works

Extras policies give you discounts on health services that aren’t covered by Medicare. These include dental costs, glasses, and allied health care like physiotherapy, chiropractic and podiatry. You can also claim for appliances like hearing aids, orthoses and blood glucose monitors.

Don’t buy extras if you aren’t prepared to put the effort in to claim

Extras isn’t insurance in the traditional sense of the word, where you buy it “just in case”. Think of it as more of a book of discount vouchers. By paying a monthly premium you can use it to spread your expenses more evenly over the course of the year. Used correctly it can even reduce your health costs.

Most people bundle an extras policy with their private hospital cover. This isn’t necessary: you can buy hospital cover on its own, and you don’t need extras to avoid the tax penalties the government imposes on people without health insurance.

General, major and preventative dental explained

When is dental care not just dental care? When it’s covered by your extras policy. Depending on your policy you might be covered for just the basic services, or the whole range of out-of-hospital dental treatments. Many insurers will have different annual limits for simple and complex treatment. 

  • General dental is covered by just about every extras policy on the market. It includes all the basic, routine dental treatment you know and love, like X-rays, fillings and simple extractions. 
  • Preventative dental refers to regular check-ups and cleans. It falls under general dental but sometimes insurers won’t count those items toward your annual limit.
  • Major dental includes bigger jobs like surgical tooth extractions and crowns. 
  • Endodontic (root canals) is often bundled with major dental but is its own category, meaning insurers can have a separate limit for it, or exclude it entirely. 
  • Orthodontic (braces) almost always has separate limits.

We’ve listed the cover each recommended policy offers for a regular check-up, which consists of periodic oral exam, scale and clean, and fluoride treatment. These are itemised separately on your bill, and your policy will have individual benefits for each. We’ve summed the three amounts to make it easier to compare.

How we compare extras

We compare policies on the following criteria.

Price

  • For seniors, the premium before the rebate for a single person must be under $90.
  • For families, the premium before the rebate for a family of two adults and two kids must be under $200.
  • For singles and couples, the premium before the rebate for a single person must be under $50.

Complaints

The rate and seriousness of complaints made to the ombudsman about the health fund. We only selected funds that have a low or medium complaints rating in our health insurance comparison.

Cover

In each recommended category, we score selected services that we decide need to be covered for that category. This includes:

  • the rebates available for individual items (e.g. a physio session) and the total amount you can claim in a year
  • the range of services available in a policy.

Product information for all health insurance products is published by the government at data.gov.au. We use complaint data published by the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman.

Ready to find the best extras cover?

Log in to see our pick for the best extras for seniors, families, singles and couples. These results are for CHOICE members only and focus on extras insurance. If you’re looking for hospital insurance policies, visit our health insurance comparison.

Non-members can read our extras insurance buying guide for more information on choosing extras cover.

Our buying guide explains how to work out if your current extras insurance policy is right for you, what level of extras cover you need, and how much you can claim.

Jodi

I manage CHOICE's Money and Travel team. We look after health, home, car, travel and pet insurance reviews plus all the travel content. I studied a Bachelor of Commerce Majoring in Economics and worked in finance for many years in Sydney, London, Amsterdam and Switzerland before I joined CHOICE in 2012. So I've done plenty of travel and I'm no stranger to playing with numbers. I like breaking down complex consumer decisions about financial services into easy to understand steps, and comparing all the products to find the best in the market. Especially when the best products are cheaper than those that aren't so good. We see that a lot. I also really like holding companies to account for failing their customers. Unfortunately we also see a lot of that. From timeshares to airlines, funeral insurance and poor financial advice. You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

I manage CHOICE's Money and Travel team. We look after health, home, car, travel and pet insurance reviews plus all the travel content. I studied a Bachelor of Commerce Majoring in Economics and worked in finance for many years in Sydney, London, Amsterdam and Switzerland before I joined CHOICE in 2012. So I've done plenty of travel and I'm no stranger to playing with numbers. I like breaking down complex consumer decisions about financial services into easy to understand steps, and comparing all the products to find the best in the market. Especially when the best products are cheaper than those that aren't so good. We see that a lot. I also really like holding companies to account for failing their customers. Unfortunately we also see a lot of that. From timeshares to airlines, funeral insurance and poor financial advice. You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Daniel

I joined CHOICE in 2015 as a journalist in our investigations team, focusing on insurance stories and comparisons. At various times I've covered the health, home, car and pet insurance beats. These days I'm in the Money & Travel team. Most of my days are spent deep in product disclosure documents, spreadsheets and databases to do the hard work of comparing insurance so you don't have to. My day-to-day involves maintaining and expanding our database of general insurance products, and figuring out ways to automate our data handling processes. I hold a Graduate Diploma of Journalism from UTS and a Bachelor of Arts from University of Sydney. I am a proud member of the journalists' union, the MEAA.

I joined CHOICE in 2015 as a journalist in our investigations team, focusing on insurance stories and comparisons. At various times I've covered the health, home, car and pet insurance beats. These days I'm in the Money & Travel team. Most of my days are spent deep in product disclosure documents, spreadsheets and databases to do the hard work of comparing insurance so you don't have to. My day-to-day involves maintaining and expanding our database of general insurance products, and figuring out ways to automate our data handling processes. I hold a Graduate Diploma of Journalism from UTS and a Bachelor of Arts from University of Sydney. I am a proud member of the journalists' union, the MEAA.

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