Do you need private cover on PR visa?

[Monkeylloyd1]

Hi myself, hubby, and two boys are coming over in may this year and I was ordering do we need private insurance as well as Medicard? Or holiday insurance until Medicard comes through??? We have a Subclass 189 PR visa. Any replies greatly appreciated. Thanks jody. Xxx

[jjgibbs]

You don't NEED it but i advise getting it

[Naomi from Manchester]

If you don't get it, you'll incur a fine which is approx the price of basic cover anyway.

[Monkeylloyd1]

Ok thank you, any advice for competitive companies for health cover? X

[NicF]

If you are coming over on a PR visa then you don't need private health insurance but you can take it out if you want to. Health cover is usually split in to Hospital cover and extras. Extras is things like dentists, opticians and ambulance cover. If you don't have private hospital health insurance and earn over a certain amount (sorry can't remember the exact figure) you will have to pay an extra Medicare levy on your earnings. If you don't earn over the limit you just pay the normal Medicare levy that everyone pays. Even with Medicare health care is not always completely free here. It is possible to find bulk billing doctors, which means you don't pay anything, but a lot of doctors charge more than what is covered by Medicare and you have to pay the gap. This also applies to various other medical services provided. It is also possible to go to a private provider without health insurance and pay the gap between what Medicare covers and the private health charge. This is often faster than going on the public system and depending on the problem can be affordable without private health insurance. Be aware that even with private health insurance there is often a gap to pay between the cost of the procedure and the amount the health insurance covers.

 

As far as providers go you could try somewhere like Bupa, Healthfirst or Medibank. In South Australia there is also Health Partners. Whether private health insurance is worth it or not is really a personal decision based on your personal circumstances. We had both hospital and extras cover but decided for what we paid for the hospital cover it wasn't really worth it and cancelled it (we don't earn enough to pay the extra levy though). We do have extras cover though and find it very useful for us as a family.

 

You don't have to have your health insurance in place for when you land. If you decide to take it out you can wait until you get here. What I would recommend though is getting some one way travel insurance to cover your trip over in case anything goes wrong on the way. Normal holiday insurance won't cover you as you are not going to be returning to the UK, but there are places that do insurance for one way trips. Try googling one way travel insurance or backpackers travel insurance - quite often the same companies will do both.

[silencio]

There also HIF and HCF as private health providers.

In South Australia you need ambulance cover, this is not covered under medicare and known as the 'expensive ride' for people without it (700-800 bucks out-of-pocket money). Because you are a whole family it is more likely you'll need it.

Dental is also not covered, so we took out 'extras only' with HIF (they are the cheapest one because they don't advertise and don't have big and expensive offices and staff).

You have 12 months as a new arrival to decide whether to take out private hospital insurance, after 12 months the loading applies to you depending on your age (2 % more for every year over 30 I guess it was)