For ahm policies, it’s less about if and more about when you’ll be able to use your health insurance with a pre-existing condition. A pre-existing condition is considered an ailment or illness that has impacted you in the 6 months before your policy started. This can include having signs and symptoms of the condition, rather than a confirmed diagnosis.

If you’re looking at ahm policies and have a pre-existing condition (professionally determined or not), an ahm medical practitioner will have to do their own assessment to decide whether your illness is pre-existing. This means you’ll need to submit some information from your doctor, then ahm will come back to you within 10 working days with a decision.

Once you’re insured, you won’t be able to make any claims towards treatments related to your pre-existing condition until the 12-month waiting period is over. This will be the same for those who have upgraded their coverage. But good news – if you’ve served these waiting periods with another fund, by law they must transfer across to the same or a lower level of cover with you, so you won’t have to re-serve them after switching.

If you’re swapping between policies and funds, keep in mind that you could still need to serve waiting periods for any services you haven’t been covered for before. For instance, if you upgrade from silver to gold hospital cover after a few years, you’ll need to serve waiting periods for any new services gold gives you access to. It’s a similar story if your new policy has different limits or a lower excess.

Managing your ahm health insurance cover online is a breeze. Once you’ve made an account, you can make or view most extras claims, to find tax statements, check out waiting periods, order replacement cards, and even search for partner private hospitals all from your laptop. Alternatively, you can fire up the ahm app on your smartphone!

You can customise ahm’s excesses to your own needs. With the choice to pay an excess that suits you (within a certain range) you can make sure your policy is providing exactly what you need. In simple terms, the higher your excess, the lower your premium, and vice versa.

Like other types of insurance, when you claim private hospital for treatment on your hospital cover, there’s an excess that needs to be paid. This excess is the amount you’ll need to pay before Medicare and your insurers come in.

When you select an ahm policy through iSelect, you’ll be able to choose an excess that ranges from $500 to $750. But of course, depending on the excess you choose, you’ll have to pay more or less in premiums.

So, if you know hospital treatments will be a regular occurrence or if you consider yourself a pretty healthy person, picking the right excess can make a big difference in your coverage.

Paying your ongoing health insurance premium is super simple. You can pay by direct debit (perfect for anyone who wants to sit back and forget about monthly bills), or one-off payments. If you want to explore other options, once you’ve signed up, you can check out the ahm app.

There are a number of options available to you to make a claim with ahm health insurance, including using the ahm app, the online portal or even the post.

How to claim for extras

1. On the spot. Use your ahm membership card to instantly claim your treatment at selected ahm providers with HICAPS.
2. Via a mobile app. Log in to the ahm app and add your claim details in under the claims tab, and you’ll be done in minutes.
3. Online. Login to your account, go to ‘make a claim’ and select the service you want. Then just add all the details and lodge your claim; just make sure to keep your receipts on hand in case you need to upload them.

How to claim for hospital treatments

If you need to make a hospital claim there are two ways to do so:

1. Once you’ve got a bill from your specialist fill in a Medicare claim form, then a Two-way claim form. Once Medicare processes these they’ll send them to ahm.
2. If you have a Medicare statement of benefits, fill in an ahm claim form and send it through with the statement of benefits. You can do this online, in the ahm app or send your forms via the post.

If your specialist is participating in ahm’s Gapover agreement they’ll bill ahm directly, so ahm can claim your Medicare rebate for you. ahm will also pay their part of your bill. Then all that’s left for you to cover is the gap between what’s already been paid and what your doctor charged.

They sure do. Many health insurance funds, including ahm, want to make sure everyone’s covered. If you’re between 18 and 29, you might be able to get a discount on your hospital cover with ahm’s youth discount.

There’s also a range of perks available to ahm health insurance members young and old, including:

1. HOYTS movie ticket discounts.
2. Up to 25% off glasses and lenses at Specsavers.
3. Up to 20% off lenses, non-prescription sunglasses and contact lenses at OPSM.