Compare Overseas Visitors Health Cover

If you’re looking to visit Australia to take a dip at world-class beaches, gaze at the Southern Cross while camping in the outback, or enjoy any one of the countless tourist experiences on offer, you may only need travel insurance.

Travel insurance typically only covers emergency medical care costs and medical repatriation if required. This could be all the cover you’re after if you’re coming to Australia as a tourist for a holiday.

OVHC, on the other hand, may be more appealing if you’re intending to live and work or study in the Land of Oz. It can also help handle emergency medical costs, while also helping pay for health care that isn’t for a life-or-death situation. This way, you don’t have to put off getting medical help until you get back home.

Just because you have an OVHC policy, it doesn’t mean you can start claiming right away. Your OVHC policy will likely come with waiting periods you’ll need to sit through. In Australia, your waiting periods for hospital treatments can range from two months for psychiatric treatments, rehab, and palliative care all the way to 12 months for pre-existing conditions. If you haven’t served this waiting period and make a claim, your insurer can decide to reject that claim.

The good news is that if you have served an OVHC waiting period with another Australian private health insurer – or at least part of it – this time may carry over, so you don’t have to start the wait all over again. It depends on what cover you’re transferring to and how long you were with the previous insurer.

But don’t forget that your policy may not technically start until you arrive in Australia. This is likely to be when the countdown clock for your waiting periods also starts ticking down.

Some countries have reciprocal healthcare agreements with Australia.³For more information, see Services Australia – When you visit Australia Citizens from those places can access Australia’s Medicare system for essential medical treatment. This includes citizens of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand.

However, you’ll need to enrol in Medicare beforehand to use a reciprocal health care agreement. They also won’t cover non-essential medical treatment; they only handle the kind that needs to happen ASAP. So, OVHC could give you more of a safety net if something were to happen to you while you were Down Under.

If your Australian trip will see you hitting the books more than the beaches, OVHC may not be what you’re after. Instead, you might want overseas student health cover (OSHC). Like OVHC, these policies can differ in coverage and may be a requirement for certain visas.

Some OVHC policies may have age limits – this is up to the insurer. For instance, they may have policies that are aimed at younger visitors. This is similar to how some visas are age limited, encouraging younger travellers to visit Australia.

If your OVHC includes cover for dependents, there’ll likely be an age cut-off for who can be classed as a dependent. This can vary between insurers.

If you aren’t happy with your current OVHC or just want to check if the grass really is greener on the other side, you’re allowed to change policies and even providers after you’ve arrived in Australia. It’s a super simple process, too.

All you need to do is get in touch with your insurer and cancel your policy. Just remember to ask them for a clearance certificate (this is a record of your cover). You can then sign up with a new insurer, sharing your clearance certificate to potentially avoid serving certain waiting periods again.

If you want to reduce your legwork, you can also just pick up a new policy straightway with a new insurer. You’ll just need to have the details of your old insurer and policy handy. That way, your new insurer can reach out on your behalf for that clearance certificate.

With a process this easy, there’s no reason to stick with an OVHC policy that isn’t working for you. The one catch is that you don’t want to accidentally be in violation of condition 8501.

This could come about by not having any cover for a time. Thankfully, there’s some leeway as your new insurer must cover you up to 30 days from the date you left your old insurer. So, you don’t immediately need to have a new policy lined up when you end your old one.

Alternatively, you might do your due diligence and always have some kind of health insurance but inadvertently pick a new OVHC that doesn’t satisfy condition 8501. It might be boring, but this is why it can matter to read the product disclosure statement (PDS) and even reach out to the insurer if you have any questions.