{"id":336828,"date":"2026-03-19T04:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T04:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/336828\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T04:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T04:27:08","slug":"how-new-changes-affect-pension-income-and-the-commonwealth-seniors-health-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/336828\/","title":{"rendered":"How new changes affect pension income and the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Q: My wife and I are both 69 and self-funded retirees. We have $1.4 million in combined account-based pensions in our self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF), earn about $10,000 a year from a share portfolio outside super, and both hold Commonwealth Seniors Health Cards. We\u2019ve just been told our private health insurance premiums are going up by almost 5 per cent from April, and now hear deeming rates are rising. We\u2019re worried about the cost and whether we could lose our cards. Should we be concerned? Frank<\/p>\n<p>A: It\u2019s understandable to feel concern when two cost increases land in the same month. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.afr.com\/companies\/healthcare-and-fitness\/health-insurance-costs-to-jump-4-4pc-the-biggest-jump-for-eight-years-20260209-p5o0oo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">A private health insurance premium hike<\/a> of nearly 5 per cent from April 1, coupled with higher deeming rates from March 20, is enough to make any retiree think.<\/p>\n<p>Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Q: My wife and I are both 69 and self-funded retirees. We have $1.4 million in combined account-based&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-336828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}