HCF toothache agony

DH has paid a fortune to HCF over the years for very little benefit.

She is in it basically for 3 reasons

1. Howard's stick - join now or burn in public hospital limboland for every
   


2. Howard's destruction of dental hospitals. She never wanted to be in a position to have to walk around with a big black hole in her smile.
   


3. She is able to bundle her mother, now 80, with herself and child, and so it seemed like a necessary investmant

Currently the rate is about $55 a week. Thank Goodness, none of them have been in hospital. Well her mother has, but she was advised that she would get a better deal in a public ward, so never used it.

Now finally, when DH is getting to the age when her investment in Health Insurance might reasonably be expected to have paid off (God Forbid!), current economic realities are forcing her to lose her grasp on the payments.

She needs to have an infected tooth removed, but she is getting up to nearly $500 in arrears. What to do? Borrow money to catch up with the payments, and hope her job-seeking efforts pay off soon? Drop the insurance and just pay the dentist? How agonising would that be after having sunk so much money into this outfit over the years?

You would think that a wealthy country like Australia, with a fortune coming in in mineral sales, and hardly any population to speak of compared to the rest of the world, could organise to have its population's toothaches cured, without having recourse to visiting Thai Budhhist monks coming here as an act of charity to fix the teeth of the poor, (as reported in the Daily Telegraph. See Wake up and smell the bad breath. Something rotten in the state of Howard's Australia.)