What working visas require health insurance?

The 457 working visa and the 417 working holiday visa may be the most well-known working visas in Australia, but there are plenty of other working visas that also require health insurance:

Make sure when you are apply for health cover that it will satisfy the conditions specific to your visa type. Use the Department of Immigration Visa Finder online to find out which working visa you need.

If you are a from a country which has a reciprocal health care agreement with Australia (currently Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, or the United Kingdom (UK)), you may be able to enrol in Medicare (Australia’s public health insurance system). Visitors from these countries do not need to buy health insurance as a condition of their visa. Find out more about reciprocal health care agreements here.

Since you cannot enrol in Medicare from outside Australia, you will still need to have adequate health cover before you arrive. Medicare only covers treatment in a public hospital, so you will still need to consider whether private health insurance is right for you. Not having an adequate level of private health cover might mean you have to pay a larger amount of tax in Australia in the form of the Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS).

There are two levels of cover for working visa health insurance:

1. Hospital
2. Hospital and Medical

At a minimum, working visa health insurance will help cover the costs involved in being admitted to a hospital within Australia. This includes the cost of staying in a hospital bed overnight, operating theatre fees for surgery, medicines, the cost of any medical procedures, and riding in an ambulance in an emergency. Policies may also cover some types of medical services that are used outside of a hospital.

Hospital cover should include all surgical procedures covered on the Medicare Benefit Schedule (MBS), such as:

• Ambulance services
• Your stay in a private hospital (for private hospital polices)
• Your stay overnight in a private or shared room (accommodation)
• Same day admission fee
• Intensive care
• Surgery operating theatre fees
• Your stay in a public hospital as a private patient (accommodation)
• Doctor’s fee for in-hospital medical services as a private patient
• Pharmacy medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) taken while in hospital
• Emergency accidental injury
• Cardiac (heart services)
• Ear, nose and throat
• Removal of appendix (appendicitis)
• Removal of tonsils and adenoids
• Removal of wisdom teeth in hospital
• Eye surgery including cataract lens
• Rehabilitation and physiotherapy in hospital
• Joint replacement and joint reconstruction
• Pregnancy, assisted reproductive IVF, and childbirth (obstetrics) (waiting periods will apply)
• Hysterectomy
• Sterilisation
• Psychiatric treatment (waiting periods will apply)
• Renal dialysis (for kidney failure)
• Colonoscopy
• Gastric banding
• Palliative care
• Plastic non-cosmetic surgery (where medically necessary)
• Prosthetics (surgically implanted)
• All other in-hospital services on the MBS

If you want to be covered for any out of hospital costs, you might want to consider Hospital and Medical cover. This adds medical cover to your hospital cover.

Medical cover may include:

• General Practitioners (GP)
• Specialists
• Radiology (X-ray, MRI, CAT)
• Pathology (e.g. blood tests)
• Prescription pharmacy medicines (listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme)

If you would also like to be covered for other common medical services like a trip to the dentist, optometrist, physiotherapist, chiropractor, remedial massage, cancer screenings and more, you should consider an Extras Cover health insurance policy to add to your working visa health insurance. Some insurers also offer policies that include hospital, medical, and extras cover.

Any costs and charges above the benefit paid by your insurer will be part of your “gap”, which is your out-of-pocket expenses.

The insurance companies that offer working visa health cover in 2021 are:

1. Allianz
2. Australian Unity
3. Bupa
4. CBHS
5. Frank
6. HBF
7. HCF
8. HIF
9. Medibank
10. IMAN Health Plans (a subsidiary of nib)
11. Westfund

How to buy working visa health cover

You can buy your working visa health cover through your employer or you can buy it online on an insurance company’s website. You can choose your insurance company, even if your employer has a “preferred provider” and recommends that you choose their provider. This is different to in the past, when only your employer could arrange your health insurance.

You can use the myVEVO Visa Entitlement Verification Online app (available for Android and Apple devices) to check your Australian visa expiry date, work rights, study rights, and travel conditions. You can also email your visa details directly from myVEVO to your employer, school or other organisation.

You can transfer to a different working visa health insurance company anytime. If you paid in advance for your working visa health cover, you can get a refund, but you may have to pay a ‘refund processing fee’.

You must buy a new working visa health insurance policy before you can get a refund from your previous insurance provider, because you must have insurance for the whole time you are in Australia. You will not have to wait the waiting periods again after you change working visa health cover providers, provided you are transferring to a policy with the same level of cover as your previous one.