Getting a Medicare card in Australia

First, work out if you are eligible

Medicare eligibility follows your visa, not your address. Broadly, you can enrol if you are:

• An Australian citizen or permanent resident.
• A visitor from a country with a Reciprocal Health Care Agreement with Australia. These agreements give you cover for medically necessary treatment while you are here, and the list of countries is published by Services Australia.
• In many cases, someone who has applied for permanent residency and meets certain conditions.

If you are here on a student visa, you almost certainly have Overseas Student Health Cover instead. That is a private policy you arrange before your visa is granted, and it works differently from Medicare. If you are on a working holiday visa, you are usually not eligible unless your home country has a reciprocal agreement.

Eligibility rules change and they depend on your individual visa, so treat this page as a starting point and confirm your own situation on the Services Australia website. Nyvo cannot give you immigration advice, and anyone who tells you they can should be registered to do it.

What you need to enrol

Bring the originals, not photocopies:

• Your passport, with your current visa.
• Evidence of your visa status if it is not in the passport, which for most people is the grant letter or a VEVO check.
• If you are enrolling under a reciprocal agreement, your national health card or the equivalent from your home country.
• An Australian address where the card can be posted.

If you are enrolling children, bring their passports and birth certificates too.

How to enrol

Most people enrol in person at a Services Australia service centre. It is usually the fastest route, because staff can check your documents on the spot and give you your Medicare number before you leave. You can start using that number straight away, even before the plastic card arrives.

You can also enrol online through myGov in some circumstances, or by post. Once you have your card, link Medicare to your myGov account. That is where you will see your claims, your history, and your immunisation records, and you will need it for a lot of other admin later.

What Medicare actually covers

• Public hospital treatment as a public patient, at no cost to you.
• Doctor visits, either fully covered or partly covered. When a clinic covers the full cost it is called bulk billing, and you pay nothing. When it does not, you pay the fee and Medicare refunds part of it, and the difference is called the gap.
• Prescription medicines listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, at a subsidised price.
• Some tests, scans and specialist appointments, usually with a gap to pay.

Ask when you book whether a clinic bulk bills. Many do not, and the cost difference is significant.

What it does not cover

Medicare does not usually cover dental, most physiotherapy and allied health, glasses and contact lenses, or ambulance transport, which in most states you pay for separately. Ambulance cover is cheap and worth sorting out early, because a single trip without it can cost more than a year of membership.

Private health insurance sits on top of Medicare and covers some of these gaps, along with private hospital treatment. It is optional for most people, though there are tax reasons some higher earners take it out.

If you are not eligible yet

You have options. Overseas Student Health Cover is compulsory for most student visas. Working holiday makers and other temporary visa holders usually take out private health or travel insurance. Either way, do not go without cover: a hospital stay as an uninsured private patient in Australia is expensive.

While you are getting set up

Medicare is one of a handful of things worth doing in your first weeks, along with a bank account, a Tax File Number and an Australian phone number. Get those four done and most other admin becomes straightforward.