Most of us have let a gift card reach its expiry by accident, or forgotten to claim a client coffee on work.
There’s perhaps nothing more annoying than realising you have literally been giving away or failing to claim… free money.
This is the feeling 670,000 Australians will have today, upon reading that Medicare has in its possession a total of $110 million in unclaimed rebates.
Side note: If you want to teach your kids about money and the value of it check this out. Post continues after video.
Basically, the government has all of this ‘free’ money sitting in its coffers, because a large chunk of us have failed to provide bank account details so they can be repaid.
Why are we like this.
Think dental appointments, physio, hospital ultrasounds – all of those medical procedures where you’ve paid upfront, and the person who has taken your money says; “don’t worry you’ll get X amount back on Medicare, you just need to claim it.”
It turns out many of us smile and nod, and then just never claim it.
“People need to take responsibility to provide us with their bank account details. We give people ample opportunity to do that and we constantly remind them to update their account details with us,” Human Services Minister Michael Keenan told Nine this morning.
“I would prefer it was sitting in people’s bank accounts rather than ours,” he added.
Trust us Mr Keenan, we do too…
So for those of us who are in this boat, how do we get back our forgotten cash?
Logon to your MyGov account online and update your account details. If you can’t get in, call them on 132 307.
But if your details are in fact wrong, you’ll be claiming to your heart’s content and receiving nothing back.
The good news is, you could be that little bit richer just in time for the weekend if you nip this in the bud today.
“We will make sure that you get that money within 48 hours,” was Minister Keenan’s promise this morning on live TV.
Top Comments
We’re lucky, our doctors surgery does it all automatically on our bank card. Last time I had to actually go into our Medicare office, the guy had to get up and wave the eftpos machine around, trying to find a wifi signal. It did not fill me with confidence.
I believe you have to have it set up to go automatically onto your bankcard? (As in, you pay the full amount, then Medicare pays you back $37 or whatever)
Or did you do something else?
I'd like to see if the system would work better if the payments worked differently.
So, doctors appointment is $75, I pay $38 at the time of the appointment and the doctor gets $37 from Medicare.
I pay the full amount by card, then they refund straight back into the same card, all using their eftpos machine. Pretty easy, and definitely cuts down on the paperwork!
The EFTPOS machine needs to be enabled to carry out Medicare EasyClaim or HICAPS (etc) - not all practices have this.