Travel insurance till registered with Medicare

[laurajanette]

Hi, we head out in a weeks time to Sydney first for a two week holiday and then over to Perth to set up our new life, whoop whoop, but are unsure what is the best potion for travel insurance until we are registered with Medicare and have health insurance in place. We've looked at a few options but there is not a lot of feedback available for the specific companies that do emigration insurance, we've looked at DU insure and Direct Travel Insurance and wondered if anybody had any advice on their experiences?Thanks

[lara24]

There are not many companies offer 1 way travel insurance. We have booked with Insure and Go but when I said I wanted it to run for a week after we landed just to give it time for our medicare cards to come through they were happy to extend the policy dates but if you go to claim you are only covered for 24 hours after you have cleared customs. I think that would be at your final destination ie Perth not Sydney but make sure you check and I thought have the extra week would cover us but in reality we just have 1 day.

 

Maybe others have found a way to extend this but I haven't yet........ good luck

[bubba911]

There is a reciprocal medical agreement in place between the UK and Australia so my understanding and limited experience is that if you are a UK citizen and require medical treatment before you formally register with Medicare then you are covered. This is of course only at Medicare rates and you have to meet any gaps in costs (as Is the case in the system anyway). Therefore the cover lasting 24 hours beyond clearing customs would suffice.

 

we have booked with Post Office. Call them up direct and ask for a quote. They were very competitive. We were around £35 for a family of 4.

 

hope this helps.

[bubba911]

PS I stand to be corrected if I'm wrong.

[Tickled Pink]

We were able to get travel/health insurance through my husbands bank account, this covered us for the journey and three or four weeks after arrival. He upgraded to a gold account for it, cost about 20 pounds I think, then downgraded his account after. So all in, for two of us, it was pretty cheap to do it like that. The person who advised us at the bank said this wasn't an uncommon method.

[lara24]

There is a reciprocal medical agreement in place between the UK and Australia so my understanding and limited experience is that if you are a UK citizen and require medical treatment before you formally register with Medicare then you are covered. This is of course only at Medicare rates and you have to meet any gaps in costs (as Is the case in the system anyway). Therefore the cover lasting 24 hours beyond clearing customs would suffice.

 

we have booked with Post Office. Call them up direct and ask for a quote. They were very competitive. We were around £35 for a family of 4.

 

hope this helps.

 

Do you know the name of the policy you have with the Post Office? Looking on their website the single trip, long trip and explorer policies all require you to start and end your travel in the UK. This is the same problem we had with our HSBC gold account insurance, because it is just 1 way HSBC said we would not be covered.

[Guest guest74886]

Hi, we head out in a weeks time to Sydney first for a two week holiday and then over to Perth to set up our new life, whoop whoop, but are unsure what is the best potion for travel insurance until we are registered with Medicare and have health insurance in place. We've looked at a few options but there is not a lot of feedback available for the specific companies that do emigration insurance, we've looked at DU insure and Direct Travel Insurance and wondered if anybody had any advice on their experiences?Thanks

 

My understanding is that once you have your visa and it is activated and you are a Perm Resident and therefore eligible for health care regardless of whether you have registered with medicare, it would be worth checking what the situation is either with immigration or medicare directly so that you are absolutely sure, to register it is only a matter of going to a local medicare office with your docs and getting yourself registered, you may need an address for your card to come to you but you should be able to get a po box at a local po close to you as an interim if it is really a necessity, I doubt whether you would have a problem with emergency treatment if you needed it so long as you could flash your perm visa and passport at people if you did not have your medi card.

Medicare will cover you for everything , private health insurance is not a requirement if you are a perm resident, health insurance just means you get HOSPITAL TREATMENT and I stress it's only hosp treat when you want it, mainly for non emergency stuff, you still have to go to GP and that is paid for by Medicare with a top up by you the patient if the gp charges more than medicare rates.

Also I think with travel insurance you have to return to your starting point for it to be valid, I just throw that in so that you can check that you are actually covered if you do take it out.

[Incata]

We used DU Insure and had no problems whatsoever (so I don't know what they are like if you make a claim). Cover ceases as soon as you land. This wasn't a problem for us because we landed about 6pm, were met by my husband, got to the hotel and I went to bed while husband entertained the kids. 9am we were at the medicare office and at 9.05am we were covered.

 

However due to the reciprocal healthcare agreement with the UK, we would have been covered anyway. Last year, when we were visiting, I went into anaphylactic shock and had to go to hospital. I just showed my passport and signed a form saying I was from the UK (I think, it's a bit hazy now) and I was treated exactly the same as a local. I was kept in overnight because of a slight complication, but at no point did anyone ask if I was registered with medicare, or ask for my medicare card.

 

One way insurance with DU Insure was cheap and I felt very secure with it.

 

If something happens on the flight from Sydney to Perth you will be an Australian Resident anyway, whether or not you have the healthcare card.

[blossom]

As others have said, you are covered by Medicare from as soon as you land. If you haven't applied for your card yet you pay in the day and claim most back from Medicare.

 

Most insurance companies won't pay out if you are able to claim the cost from somewhere else. One of the reasons most insurance companies in the uk insisted that you needed your E1 11 form if travelling to Europe (at least a few years ago, I assume its still in the small print).

[bubba911]

Do you know the name of the policy you have with the Post Office? Looking on their website the single trip, long trip and explorer policies all require you to start and end your travel in the UK. This is the same problem we had with our HSBC gold account insurance, because it is just 1 way HSBC said we would not be covered.

 

Te policy is not available online. Or at least I couldn't find it. I called them up for a quote. They were very helpful.