Essential Choice (Bronze Plus)

Hospital: what is covered

Restricted means partially covered for hospital costs as a private patient in a public hospital; in a private room or private hospital you may face significant expenses.

Excess, waiting periods and hospital

• Tier - Bronze Plus
• Hospital - Private hospital, or a shared room in a public hospital
• Excess - Capped per person and per policy per year. $500 per person a year. $500 per policy a year.
• Co-payments - None.
• Known gap - Yes, with the fund's doctors
• Age-based discount - Not offered
• Accident cover - Yes
• Travel and accommodation benefits - No

Waiting periods

• Most treatments - 2 months
• Existing conditions - 12 months
• Rehabilitation, psychiatric and palliative care - 2 months

As filed by the insurer: Day surgery excess is limited to half the total per person excess (where no overnight stay). If the total per person excess isn’t paid after your first hospital admission you will pay the balance on any subsequent admission(s) within the calendar year. Additional Benefits of the cover: Hospital Substitution Programs, Preventative Health Services and Health Support Programs. Waiting periods may apply. Please refer to the product Fact Sheet or contact Australian Unity for further details.

Extras: what you get back

Not covered: Braces, Prescriptions not on the PBS, Hearing aids, Blood glucose monitors, Audiology, Antenatal and postnatal, Chinese herbal medicine, Eye therapy (orthoptics), Health management programs, Home nursing, Occupational therapy, Orthotics, Speech therapy.

* 1) No waiting-period for preventative dental and selected diagnostic services.T reatments claimed as No Gap Dental benefits (where available) do not count to yearly limit. 2) A full denture replacement is limited to once every three years. 3) Surgical tooth extractions and treatment of gum disease have a 12-month waiting period. 4) Limit of one chiropractic x-ray per person per calendar year. 5) Travel Vaccinations only.

Other services, as filed: Annual benefit limits apply per calendar year. Myotherapy also included - 60% of the consultation fee, maximum of $200 per person (Combined limit with Acupuncture and Remedial Massage), 2 month waiting period. There are Preventative Health Services and Health Support Programs available on this cover. Please refer to the product Fact Sheet or contact Australian Unity for further details.

Ambulance

Emergency ambulance. Call-out fees covered. Waiting period for emergency transport: none. No limit on emergency transport.

Agreement hospitals in Western Australia

Australian Unity has agreements with 44 private hospitals here, as filed with the Ombudsman.

This policy's other options

Every state, household and excess the insurer filed for this policy, with the premium before the rebate.

Member retention (hospital cover)

81.4% is the Commonwealth Ombudsman's figure for Australian Unity in its State of the Health Funds Report 2024-25 (Table 1, page 15; data at 30 June 2025).

The Ombudsman describes it as one measure of the comparative effectiveness of insurers and of their level of member satisfaction: the percentage of members, hospital memberships only, who have remained with the insurer for 2 years or more (page 12). It is published for the insurer, not for this policy, and is not adjusted for policies that lapse when a member dies. The Ombudsman cautions that no single indicator shows an insurer's overall performance (page 27).

It is shown as published. The list is not sorted, filtered or ranked by it.

Member retention is the Commonwealth Ombudsman's figure, from its State of the Health Funds Report 2024-25. Source: Licensed from the Commonwealth Ombudsman under a Creative Commons 4.0 licence. This report is available from the Commonwealth Ombudsman website at www.ombudsman.gov.au.

Where this comes from

Policy details come from the PrivateHealth.gov.au dataset published by the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman on data.gov.au (release of 1 Oct 2026), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia. Statement J62/NHSM10, filed by Australian Unity Health Limited, issued 1 Apr 2026.