Upon seeing the price of her health insurance premiums, Rebecca Kiddey thought it was a good time to look at her options before they increased even further.
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"We knew what we were paying per year but when we heard about the increase, we thought it was a good time to shop around," she said.
While the Macgregor resident wasn't able to find a better and cheaper policy to her existing one, she had noticed a steep increase to her premiums over recent years.
"We've been seeing it go up, which isn't a good thing," she said.
"We got the letter recently notifying us saying it was going to be an increase of $8.50 a fortnight, but it's enough for you to notice and you don't know how much it will be the next year."
A new consumer survey has shown a large number of Canberrans don't know how much they're paying for health insurance.
The survey found one in seven ACT residents didn't know the price of their premiums.
Out of the more than 2000 people surveyed nationally, one in five were unaware of the price they were paying for their insurance.
While the ACT had a high percentage not knowing the cost of their premiums, ACT residents were the second most aware in the country, just behind South Australia.
Tasmania was found to be the least aware, with a third of residents unaware of premium costs.
Only 13.6 per cent of Baby Boomers were unaware, followed by Generation X at 19.2 per cent and Generation Y at 27.8 per cent.
Insights manager at comparison site finder.com Graham Cook said premiums had risen by 50 per cent since 2010 and are set to rise even further after the April 1 price hike.
"People are unaware of what they're paying because it's a case of set and forget," he said.
"It's also that people have been with a fund for so long that they don't remember what they pay. The average amount of time that people have been with the same health insurance company is 11.8 years."
Premiums will increase by 4.8 per cent this year, with the average health insurance policy expected to cost $4137.
Mr Cook said the complicated nature of health insurance often meant people were reluctant to change their policy in order to save money.
However, he said shopping around or calling up health insurance providers directly was one of the best way to get the best price.
"If you call up your own provider and have that conversation, they can run through the different options and they'd be eager to do something for you to keep your business rather than have you move on," he said.
