According to my mother the principle benefit of private health-care insurance in a state with public healthcare is the fact that you can go to a private hospital in short order to get your [insert medical care], as opposed to the public hospital (which is unspecialised, crowded, has long waiting lists, and is spread thin in terms of it's ability to treat you effectively). the card gets you into the nice clinc/hospital/etc quickly and easily and thus smooths out a great deal of bullshit when you least want bullshit. The other stuff is just extracting more money from the thing.

(Financially speaking, you are lucky to have cheap tastes, but most people don't. The world is full of people who play MTG and go on two-month trips to the USA.)

(Also: I'd be interested in any high-quality recommendations WRT finance blogs. I haven't run into anything good in the genre for a good while now)