The government has announced from the 1st April 2019 16 natural therapies won’t be receiving the private health insurance rebate as part of a general treatment policy. While insurers can still offer benefits for these as incentives, they won’t be able to offer benefits for these therapies as part of a complying health insurance policy. So the bottom line is your extras cover likely will no longer cover you at all for these therapies. Here’s the full list of the 16 natural therapies.
Alexander Technique
Alexander technique is designed to help you achieve natural balance and poise through thinking in activity, includingan even distribution of muscle tone. This helps you counter bad posture habits that may inhibit your movement.
Aromatherapy
Aromatherapy uses aromatic plant oils to boost psychological and physical well-being. Aromatherapists aim to treat ailments like digestive disorders, muscle pains, anxiety, depression, and headaches.
Bowen Therapy
Bowen therapy uses small moves or remedial body techniques on the soft connective tissue of your body. It’s designed to treat musculoskeletal or related neurological problems such as sport injuries, by addressing the cause of the problem rather than the symptoms.
Buteyko
Buteyko is a breathing-retraining method that could help with conditions like asthma and sleep-disordered breathing. Buteyko teaches you how to monitor your breathing in daily life, with the goal of restoring natural nasal breathing.
Feldenkrais
Feldenkrais helps you explore movement, posture, and breathing through touch. It is typically used by, singers, dancers, athletes and people rehabilitating from injuries or illnesses. It focuses on making sense of sensory feedback to improve quality of movement.
Western Herbalism
Western herbalism uses plants in the form of herbs, herbal materials, herbal preparations, and finished herbal products to treat a range of conditions. The conditions range from skin conditions to colds and flu, as well as anxiety and tension, respiratory conditions, and digestive disorders.
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a type of alternative medicine based on the idea of treating like with like. The central concept is to use diluted preparations to stimulate the body to heal itself. This area of practice has been under close scrutiny by the medical and scientific communities, homeopathy claims to treat physical, mental, or emotional symptoms.
Iridology
Iridology is more a diagnosis tool than treatment. It draws on the features of the patient’s iris – patterns, colours, and other characteristics – to find out the patient’s health status. Iridology assumes you can determine whether organs are healthy, inflamed, or distressed, for example.
Kinesiology
Kinesiology relies on muscle monitoring to check for imbalances causing disease in the body. The central concept is that, by identifying and correcting these imbalances, you can also assist with issues like stress, minor injuries, and nutrition. Kinesiology includes techniques like acupressure, nutritional advice, and massage.
Naturopathy
Naturopathy is focused on supporting individuals in living a healthy lifestyle based on healthy diet, clean water, exercise, and stress management. Therapies include nutritional medicine, diet advice, homoeopathy, lifestyle advice, massage, acupressure, and Bowen technique.
Pilates
Pilates is a set of around 500 exercises designed to boost flexibility, strength, balance, and body awareness by lengthening and stretching all the major muscle groups. While it’s not designed to treat specific conditions, as exercise it could potentially enhance general physical healthy and stress management.
Reflexology
Reflexology aims to promote wellness in the body through massaging the feet at its reflex points, which correspond to different structures and organs in your body. The idea is the reflexologist can remove blockages of energy fields in the body by pinpointing corresponding points in the feet. This could be used to relieve stress and pain in the body.
Rolfing
Rolfing focuses on correcting the positioning of the myofascial layers in your body to return your body to its optimal structure. It is intended be used to treat things like chronic pain, arthritis, or back pain.
Shiatsu
Originating in Japan, Shiatsu is a therapeutic form of acupressure, muscle meridian stretching and corrective exercises. By applying pressure to certain points of the body, the technique was intended to help patients restore his or her balance of energy and in turn boost general well-being and the body’s natural health abilities.
Taichi
Taichi is a form of exercise comprising gentle, graceful movements. While it wasn’t designed to treat specific ailments, it could potentially clear the mind, help with stress management, and enhance flexibility and strength.
Yoga
Yoga is an ancient Indian philosophy originally founded as a path to spiritual enlightenment. It’s popular today as a gentle form of exercise and stress management. Yoga comes in many different varieties but structured poses and breath awareness are key to any type of yoga. Health benefits could include enhanced fitness and normalising blood pressure.
If you have extras cover, you most probably won’t be able to claim benefits for these 16 therapies. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t access these natural therapies. You can still have these treatments done but you likely will need to cover the full cost of the service yourself.
Will this affect your current policy? Want to know where to go from here? Just choose your status below to get started: