Over 70 Oz resident needs one way travel insurance
#31
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Joined: Jan 2017
Posts: 2,900
Re: Over 70 Oz resident needs one way travel insurance
This sounds like you are confusing the requirements to be eligible for a resident return visa, with Medicare eligibility. They are completely different things. You can be an Australian permanent resident, inside Australia, with no access to Medicare.
If you are an Australian permanent resident, you only retain Medicare access for 12 months after you first leave Australia. That clock does not get reset if you come back for a visit and then leave again. In your circumstance - you may very well find that Medicare has considered you to have left Australia, and not moved back . . . or hasn't noticed, but will if you end up in some serious emergency and they start checking records.
Concur with Pulaski. You may not be as sorted with health care coverage in the UK and Australia as you think, and better get that, and the other eligibility requirements, clarified ASAP. ESPECIALLY as I think (but can't confirm - only did a cursory search) that Medicare may use the same 183 day rule as the UK does - which means if you are spending 183 days in the UK to get covered by NHS, you are NOT currently covered by Australian Medicare, inside Australia - not something they would easily catch if everything is OK and you are just going to the doctor for routine visits etc, but if you need expensive repatriation, they may well ask questions and deny you.
Last edited by carcajou; Jan 12th 2019 at 7:49 pm.