Give or take a week or so for the system to accept you've arrived in the country

Also irrelevant but interesting to note that QLD Ambulance cover is no longer attached to the Electricity bill. You simply have to prove residence if asked.

The best thing I've gotten out of my private health cover was being able to ask the surgeon to schedule my exact time of my Hernia op to coincide with the World Cup... So I got to see the whole of the world cup at home whilst recovering on a doctors certificate. He was more than happy and quite amused to schedule that for me about 7 weeks away from, the op... rather than booking me in in 2 or 3 days.

I'm a big fan of the Aus system... except for dental..... Dentists are worse than plumbers in their costs.

Both daughters had their jaw surgeries on Medicare and each time the surgeon booked the ops for when it suited us. In fact for second daughter he was planning to resign from the public service but changed his resignation date so he could do her work. Also I was able to choose the date for my hysterectomy. I guess it's down to the surgeon but in my opinion Medicare are brilliant.

Disclaimer: Yes I know some people have rubbish service with Medicare.

In the UK, if you do not have access to a NHS dentist (which many don't) costs are similar to Australia. Private insurance in Australia can often cover quite a bit too - Medicare does too if surgery is involved

For low cost options look at SE Asia - Bangkok, Bali etc

It's a lot harder to find a decent quality good value dentist by a country mile than than a doctor.... Good doctors even decent bulk billing Docs are everywhere in my locale.

If you happen to live near one of these SydneySiders, then you have struck pay dirt based on our Coburg experience. They've opened up a Dentistry here and it's half the price of just about every dentist around here. The Doctors there ... well 80 pct of.....them are fantastic.

HealthSure Medical Centres

Glad to hear Atenolol is so inexpensive in Australia, ianandhelena; I used to pay £8.20 (ca. AUD12?) for 60 tablets when I paid for my NHS prescription in England. In Scotland all prescriptions are free, but I never minded paying £4.10/month for life-changing medicine and would gladly have continued to do so.

Also, thanks for your comments about Dentistry - these are very timely for us, because my partner was due to have the first part of a dental-implant inserted today, followed by her looking for the actual 'tooth' part to be fitted whilst in Australia. Using a common international 'post', this was going to be pretty expensive, (ca. £1500), and she would then have to find an Australian dentist capable of completing the work within the next few months.

This did make her a bit anxious, and in the end - what with us travelling soon and the risk of complications - she decided against going ahead and will now have the whole job performed when we get to Adelaide, once she finds a dentist she's happy with.

Hopefully she can find one easily and at reasonable cost in light of your comments.

I had a full lower jaw dental reconstruction in Perth 2 years ago. It involved having 4 implants, with a fixed (permanent) porcelain denture screwed in place. Me new teef look lovely. And they only cost $32,000 My private health cover picked up the cost of the day surgery, otherwise there would have been a couple of thousand on top of that. Medicare paid nothing.

My sister got a single dental implant 3 years ago, it was $6,500.

Yeah that was about the only thing Anna Bligh did that Can't Do didn't undo.

I have had a crown replaced, root canal was done many years ago in the UK and nearly feel of the dental chair when they told me the cost. Just the crown cost as much as the full procedure in the UK with root canal etc.
I did mention to the dentist I thought it was quite expensive, and she said oh no that's quite normal.

A single implant cost me $7500.

One other thing, and cannot remember the figure but if you go over the threshold then you can claim some of it back during your tax return.

As for ambulance cover, it is pretty cheap to take out in VIC as only recently found my PHP only covers 1 callout per year. Was surprised as this is a top BUPA cover provided by my company.

I know you've mentioned this before - are you sure you're reading your policy correctly?

The only limit on my health insurance is for 'call outs which do not result in transfer to hospital' of which I get 2. Ambulance call outs which do result in a hospital transfer are unlimited.

But you're in NSW not Vic. Might be different rules. Might be I'm talking out of my arse of course. x

I think we should let new enquirers know that if they are not arriving directly from the UK within the last 3 months of leaving UK they are NOT covered by the reciprocal agreement.

I know this does not affect the OP but just wanted to say because when I was doing all my research on here I didn't come across the fact that even if you are a British citizen but might have been working outside the UK for a little while that this means you are no longer deemed eligible for Medicare on arriving in UK.

I believe so, I would need to call Bupa to confirm the fine print as the document I have only mentions 1 per year. It may well be as you mention, but not very clear if that is the case.

Out with a friend for lunch last weekend, who has NIB and not the greatest of policies compared to mine. Then again it is not work provided. We checked the Ambo cover, which said unlimited call outs.

Then again, really does not matter to me as I relocate to Canada next week.

Haha true, it would be nice if they standardised this across Australia. Queensland seems to have the best approach to it.