OVHC insurance only offers policies by providers that are eligible to fulfill your temporary visa health insurance requirements as set by the Australian Government. This website will bring you a range of choices of providers that offer this insurance.
Overseas Visitor Health Cover (OVHC) is a product designed to assist foreigners meet the costs of medical treatment they may need while living in Australia. A number of insurance providers have products available that will meet the minimum level of coverage. You are able to choose a product which is right for you, as long as it meets the Department of Immigration’s requirements.
The Australian medical landscape has two streams, public and private. Public healthcare is generally provided free of charge to Australians although more and more medical practitioners are pricing their services above the MBS, meaning a "gap" fee will need to be paid. In the private system, doctors essentially charge what the market will pay. As you would expect, generally service is better in the private health system. Having said that, for the most part, the private health system uses the same facilities as the public health system - in Australia going private is usually a choice related to access to medical personnel, rather than gaining access to medical facilities.
Separate health insurance, over and above OVHC insurance, can be entered into in order to cover the cost of using the private health system. It should be noted that more and more, private health fund rebates do not cover the full private medical practitioners' fees, so there will likely be out of pocket expenses, even with private health insurance on top of OVHC insurance cover.
According to temporary visa health insurance requirements, at a minimum, OVHC insurance policies must cover the following:
OVHC insurance policies may only exclude the following:
To comply with the minimum level of health insurance, the only waiting periods that maybe imposed are: