To access Medicare when you’re in Australia, you must meet certain criteria.
You may be able to enrol in Medicare if you are a holder of a valid temporary visa covered by one of these Ministerial Orders:
- Contributory Parent visas (subclasses 173, 143, 884, 864)
- De facto partners of Australian citizens or permanent residents
- Fulbright scholars
- Persons from Afghanistan who hold a Humanitarian Stay (temporary) visa (subclass 449)
- Participants in the family accompaniment pilot under the Pacific Australian Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme (subclass 403)
- Persons from Israel holding a Bridging Visa E (Subclass 050 or Subclass 051) with work rights, and their immediate family members holding a Bridging Visa E
- Persons from the Occupied Palestinian Territories holding a Bridging Visa E (Subclass 050 or Subclass 051) with work rights, and their immediate family members holding a Bridging Visa E
- Removal Pending Bridging visa (subclass 070)
- Safe Haven Enterprise visa (subclass 790)
- Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional Provisional visa (subclass 494)
- Skilled Work Regional Provisional visa (subclass 491)
- Support for Victims of People Trafficking Program
- Temporary Humanitarian Concern visa (subclass 786)
- Temporary Protection visa (subclass 785)
- Unauthorised maritime arrivals holding a Bridging E (Class WE) visa.
How to enrol
You can enrol in Medicare either:
- online through myGov
- by completing a Medicare enrolment form.
Enrolling online
Some people can enrol online as either an individual or a family through myGov and track the progress.
To enrol online you and your family members need to:
- live in Australia
- have a current passport or ImmiCard
- have valid visa details from the Department of Home Affairs if you’re not an Australian citizen.
If you want to enrol as a family, we need details and identity documents for any children under 15.
If you want to include someone 15 or older, you need to give that person your myGov online application number.
They need the number to give us their details and identity documents through their own myGov account to complete their Medicare enrolment.
If you have a myGov account sign in and enrol in Medicare now. If you don’t have a myGov account you need to create one.
If your application is approved, we’ll contact you with your next steps. We’ll also send you your Medicare card in the mail to the address you gave us.
Extending Medicare eligibility
If you and your family’s Medicare eligibility is about to expire you may be able to extend it online. Learn more about extending Medicare eligibility.
Enrolling with a form
If you can’t enrol or extend online, complete a Medicare enrolment form. You can mail or email it with your supporting documents to Medicare Enrolment Services.
If you email us, include ‘Medicare enrolment’ in the email subject line.
Make sure your documents are:
- in PDF, JPG, PNG, GIF or BMP format
- not password protected, or in a WinZip or RAR file
- no larger than 5MB for each document
- no larger than 10MB in total for all the documents.
Find out what documents you need to enrol.