Healthcare & Medicare in Australia

Medicare covers Australian citizens, permanent residents and New Zealand citizens, plus applicants for certain permanent visas. It subsidises GP visits, treatment in public hospitals, and many prescription medicines through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

If you hold or have applied for an eligible permanent visa, you can usually enrol soon after arrival, even while your permanent visa is being finalised in some cases. Permanent residents receive full Medicare coverage regardless of nationality.

When you see a GP, the visit may be 'bulk billed' (fully covered by Medicare at no cost to you) or charged with a gap you pay yourself. This is the part that surprises people arriving from the UK: there is no registered-patient list, you can see any GP anywhere, and whether you pay is a commercial decision made by that practice rather than a rule. Bulk-billing rates vary enormously between suburbs, and a practice can bulk bill children and concession-card holders while charging everyone else.

Medicare also covers treatment as a public patient in a public hospital at no charge — but as a public patient you do not choose your doctor and you join the waiting list for anything non-urgent. That distinction is the whole argument for private hospital cover, which we set out with the numbers in our guide to health insurance in Australia.

At the pharmacy, the PBS caps what you pay for many prescription medicines, with a lower rate for concession-card holders. Carry your Medicare card to appointments so providers can claim on your behalf.

Most temporary visas — including student visas and many skilled provisional visas — require you to hold adequate health insurance as a condition of your visa, usually condition 8501. Students typically need Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC) and many other temporary residents need Overseas Visitors Health Cover (OVHC). It must be in place before you arrive, not arranged once you land.

Always check the specific conditions attached to your visa subclass, because holding the required cover is a visa condition and failing to maintain it can affect your status. If you are still deciding which subclass to apply for, our visa pathways set out what each one requires.

Australia has Reciprocal Health Care Agreements (RHCA) with 11 countries: Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Almost every page on this subject stops there, which is the point at which it stops being useful. "Australia has an agreement with your country" tells you nothing about whether you need to do anything, how long you are covered, or whether a GP appointment is included. Those three answers differ by country, and the differences are large.

The single most consequential split is between countries whose visitors must enrol in Medicare and the two whose visitors must not. Irish and New Zealand visitors are covered for public hospital treatment and PBS medicines without enrolling — but that also means no Medicare card, and therefore no benefit for seeing a GP. Everyone else enrols, gets a card, and can claim for GP visits like a resident.

The second is duration. Italian and Maltese cover runs for six months from the day you arrive, not for the length of your visa. Miss that and you are uninsured while believing you are covered.

A reciprocal agreement covers treatment that is medically necessary — care that cannot reasonably wait until you go home. It is emergency and urgent care, not a health plan.

For most permanent residents this is a financial question rather than a medical one, and it turns on two rules that are specific to people who arrive as adults: the Lifetime Health Cover loading, which gives new migrants a twelve-month window from Medicare registration before a lifelong premium loading applies, and the Medicare Levy Surcharge, which can make hospital cover cheaper than going without it.

Both are set out with a calculator you can put your own income and age into in our guide to health insurance in Australia. If your income is likely to clear the surcharge threshold, run it before you decide — above it, the arithmetic frequently favours buying cover, and what your occupation pays here is set out by profession in our cost of living comparison.