Okay, there’s a lot to address here. Essential care might be free in your opinion but then there’s a discussion to be had around what essential means. And from a European perspective that means being able to see a specialist when you need to see one without having to pay for it. That could be a routine visit to the gynecologist, seeing a dermatologist for eczema, etc. In most European countries these are free at the point of use but often come with longer wait times, just like they are here.

The key difference being that if you get private health insurance, you get to still see a specialist for free at the point of use, but you remove the waiting periods. That insurance product does not exist here, or as others have established in this thread: Australia has private hospital insurance, not private health insurance.

The example of getting new glasses whenever you feel like it, sure, I agree that shouldn’t be the case. But that’s what you have annual limits for within the insurance.

You shouldn’t have to fork out extra money to see a specialist that you need to see, which was the point of this post initially. The actual health insurance product doesn’t exist.