Heath insurance for temporary visa holders

As you may already know, some provisional visas such as Skilled Stream Provisional visas SC494 and SC491, as well as all permanent visas allow visa holders to have FREE health insurance – Medicare, which covers up to 100% of the cost of certain appointments, treatments or medicine (drugs).

However, in some cases, you will be required to provide MANDATORY additional health insurance, for example, for a Student visa. By the way, this insurance must cover the entire period of visa validity, for the whole family, and be paid in full before applying for a visa. This is a requirement for all potential students.

In addition, for other temporary Australian visas, you will be RECOMMENDED to arrange private health insurance. Unfortunately, not all visa applicants follow these recommendations, probably having hope that nothing will go wrong or just for economic reasons.

Yes, it’s not cheap, but I always recommend to have valid health insurance for my clients on Prospective Marriage visa, temporary Parents visa or waiting for Parents visa, or even a simple Tourist visa!

I have 5 significant reasons for this:

• A call for an ambulance can cost from 100 to 1,000 AUD
• Stay for 2-3 days in the hospital – about 10,000 AUD
• An ordinary appointment with a General Practitioner starts from 50 AUD, and with a specialist – from 300 AUD
• What if something difficult or tragic happens? Children then spend years paying off the cost of the uninsured parent’s hospital stay
• Surgery: one fiancée + appendicitis + no insurance = she got a job after the wedding and was paying for the hospital bill herself. Yes, even that can happen…