OSHC for Australia: Every Insurer Priced, and What the Cover Misses

Overseas Student Health Cover looks like the smallest line in an Australian offer letter. It is the one line that can shorten your visa, and once the visa is granted the mistake cannot be undone. Home Affairs decides your visa end date partly from the expiry date on your OSHC policy, and it says in plain words that the end date cannot be changed afterwards.

So this page is not a definition. It prices the same policy at every insurer that still sells OSHC, using their own live quote engines rather than the headline number on their homepages. It then compares buying through your university against buying direct, which is where the real money sits, and it lists what the cover quietly does not pay for. Every figure was read at its origin on 23 July 2026 and is dated on the page, because premiums move.

What is OSHC, and who has to buy it?

OSHC is a private health insurance product sold only to temporary visa holders who are studying in Australia. It exists because you will not have Medicare. Home Affairs states that Medicare eligibility is generally restricted to people permanently residing in Australia, and that a visitor without cover is treated as a private patient and pays at the time of treatment, in a public hospital as much as a private one.

For a Subclass 500 the requirement is absolute. You and every family member on the application must hold and maintain OSHC for the whole of your stay, and Home Affairs writes that if you do not provide your OSHC in the application form, your visa application will be refused. There are exactly three exceptions in the world, and none of them is India. Norwegian students under the Norwegian National Insurance Scheme, Swedish students covered by Kammarkollegiet, and Belgian students under their reciprocal agreement.

Two timing rules from the same page catch people out. Applying from outside Australia, your cover must start from the day you arrive, not the day your course starts, and you may be refused entry at the airport if you cannot prove it is already in force. And if you are packaging two courses with two different providers, the second policy must begin the moment the first expires, with no gap at all.

One more line there deserves attention. The department writes that you are financially responsible for any health care debts you incur in Australia, and that it might consider outstanding health debts if you apply for a visa in future. An unpaid hospital bill is not just a bill.

Why does your OSHC expiry decide when your visa ends?

This is the part almost no page tells Indian students, and it is the reason buying the cheapest twelve months is a false economy.

Home Affairs sets the length of a student visa from the course, then adds time at the end. But the grant is capped by your insurance. The department’s own words on the student visa grant periods page are that at minimum OSHC must cover the course length, that to be granted a visa covering the additional time you must have OSHC in place for the same period, and that you should consider this when deciding how much OSHC to purchase, because your visa end date cannot be changed once granted.

Here is the ladder the department applies, before that cap bites.

Now work a normal case. You start a two year master’s in February 2027 and the course finishes in November 2028. Because it ends inside the November to December window, the visa is normally granted to 15 March 2029. Counting from a 1 February 2027 arrival, that is roughly 25 and a half months of cover you must already have bought before you lodge.

Buy 24 months instead, because 24 is the number in the brochure, and your cover expires around 1 February 2029. Home Affairs grants the visa to your OSHC expiry rather than to 15 March, and you have quietly given away six weeks at exactly the point when you are graduating, job hunting and preparing a Subclass 485 post study work application. You cannot ring anybody and fix it. Postgraduate research students carry the bigger version of this risk, because their extra six months means a policy running about eight months past the end of the course.

The practical rule is simple. Work out your visa end date from the table first, buy OSHC to that date, then apply. Never the other way round.

What do the insurers actually charge for the same policy?

Comparison pages usually quote each insurer’s advertised annual price, which is the cheapest configuration each one can find. That is not what you are buying. So we ran the identical case through every insurer’s own quote engine on 23 July 2026. Single cover, Indian citizen, Subclass 500, cover running 1 February 2027 to 15 March 2029, which is the visa period from the worked example above.

Four honest notes before you use that table. Bupa’s engine sells whole months only, so 26 months is the nearest thing you can actually buy and it is marginally more cover than the others. Bupa also asks which state you will live in, and these figures are for New South Wales. Every figure includes GST where applicable.

The fourth note is about nib. nib advertises OSHC from AUD 679.57 per year for singles, but every button labelled “Get a quote” on that page is an anchor back to the same product card. There is no public tool that will price a date range, so no like for like figure exists and we have not invented one. What nib does publish is its full rate card, in Schedule K of its OSHC Fund Rules, dated 16 June 2026. Single cover on nib OSHC Core is AUD 679.57 for one year, AUD 1,368.82 for two, AUD 2,152.68 for three, AUD 3,432.28 for four and AUD 4,611.85 for five. Those rates are not pro rata. Four years costs 26.3 per cent more than four times one year, and five years 35.7 per cent more, so long degrees are penalised and the penalty accelerates.

Three things fall out of the comparison itself.

• The spread is small, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Across a whole two year visa the gap between the cheapest and dearest quotable policy is AUD 116.29. Over twelve months it is AUD 54.10. Shopping around is worth doing once, carefully, and is not worth agonising over.
• The order changes with duration. On twelve months Medibank is the dearest of the five. Over the full visa period Bupa overtakes it. Ranking insurers on an annual price and assuming it holds for your degree is simply wrong.
• Two of the five brands are the same company. ahm’s own site states that ahm health insurance is a business of Medibank Private Limited, and the ahm and Medibank OSHC quote pages are the identical form with a different logo. Yet ahm quoted AUD 96.40 less than Medibank for the same policy over the same dates. If you want Medibank’s network at a lower price, that is where it is.

One more correction is needed before you start shopping. The Australian Government’s own privatehealth.gov.au page still lists six OSHC insurers, including CBHS International Health. CBHS says on its own homepage that it no longer offers OSHC at all. Universities copy the government list onto their own pages, so you will meet the dead sixth name more than once. There are five brands selling OSHC today, run by four insurers, since Allianz Care Australia is a brand of AWP Australia and is underwritten by Peoplecare Health Limited.

Should you buy OSHC through your university or go direct?

Your offer letter will carry an OSHC figure and an invitation to pay it with your deposit. You are not obliged to. Home Affairs says the education provider or agent might arrange OSHC for you, and universities say the same. The University of Sydney tells students that cover can be purchased from our preferred provider, Bupa, or through any of the government approved providers. RMIT says its offer letter includes a Medibank Comprehensive OSHC premium, and that a student who arranges their own must give RMIT the details.

The received wisdom is that going direct is always cheaper. That turns out to be true only if you are travelling alone, and badly wrong if you are not.

Monash and ANU both publish the same Allianz Care Australia rate card in full, which proves it is a national channel rate rather than one university’s markup, and an education partner publishes the Medibank Comprehensive premium sheet for 2026. Set those against the direct quotes we ran on the same day.

Read that again if you are bringing a partner or a child. Buying direct costs a single student about 14 per cent less than the university channel and costs a family about twice as much. The inversion holds over a full visa period too, where a family buying direct from Medibank was quoted AUD 34,834.55 for 25.5 months against AUD 14,711.00 on the education partner sheet for 26 months. Retail family loadings are punishing, and the university channel is where they are negotiated away.

For a single student the channel is dearer, and it is fair to say why. Part of the gap is a better product. Monash sells Allianz Care Australia OSHC Essentials at AUD 838 for twelve months from 1 July 2026, while Allianz sells OSHC Standard direct at AUD 667. Essentials carries a pharmacy limit of AUD 750 a year for singles against AUD 500 on Standard, plus an on campus insurance agent. Medibank Comprehensive is a genuinely higher tier than Essentials and, by Medibank’s own statement, cannot be bought direct at any price.

Part of the gap is not a better product, and one university says so plainly. Monash’s page states that Monash receives an administration fee from Allianz Care for the services it performs for students and for Allianz. That is a normal commercial arrangement, disclosed properly, and worth knowing about when an offer letter presents one provider as the natural choice.

One non price warning about the university option. The University of Sydney tells students that if the University arranges cover through Bupa, the OSHC begins one week before the course starts. Home Affairs requires cover from the day you arrive. If you land a fortnight early to find accommodation, which most students do, that first week is uninsured and you may be asked for proof at the border. Whichever route you choose, set the start date to your flight date and not to orientation.

What does OSHC not pay for?

OSHC is hospital and medical cover. It is not the comprehensive private health insurance an Australian buys. The government’s consumer site puts it bluntly, saying OSHC does not pay for general treatment, meaning no dental, no optical and no physiotherapy on a standard policy. A broken tooth or a new pair of spectacles is your own money unless you buy a separate extras policy.

Medicines are covered, but capped twice over. The cap is per item and per year, and the yearly cap is the one that bites during a long illness. Every product sold today beats the government’s stated floor of AUD 50 per item and AUD 300 a year for a single, so compare the real limits rather than the floor.

Beyond that, Home Affairs lists the treatments an Australian insurer is not required to cover at all. Assisted reproductive treatment, elective cosmetic treatment, and stem cell, bone marrow and organ transplants. Nor treatment provided outside Australia, including treatment you need on the journey to or from Australia, or treatment arranged in advance of your arrival. Flying in intending to have a procedure you have already lined up is specifically outside the product.

The insurers’ fund rules go further than any marketing page. nib’s rules exclude anything rendered while your policy is in arrears, over the counter medicines bought without a prescription, medicines bought in bulk to last beyond the policy, treatment referred or provided by your own partner or family member, and, in a clause worth memorising, medical examinations, x-rays, inoculations or vaccinations required in order to obtain, renew or extend an Australian visa or to obtain permanent residency. Your visa medical is not a claim.

One number on the other side of the ledger, so this does not read as gloom. Home Affairs requires any adequate policy to carry a benefit of at least AUD 1,000,000 per person per year, and every OSHC product meets that. The cover is thin at the edges and genuinely strong in the middle, which is exactly where a hospital admission sits.

Which waiting periods apply, and which one disappears on a two year policy?

A waiting period is time you must serve on the policy before a benefit is payable. The government sets the maximums an Australian insurer may impose, and every OSHC product sits at or under them.

Now the part that ties this section back to duration. Two insurers waive the twelve month pregnancy and birth wait entirely on a longer policy. Allianz Care Australia’s own comparison table shows a twelve month waiting period for pregnancy and birth only on OSHC policies less than two years, and Monash restates it for its students as waived waiting periods on policies with a duration of two years or more. nib’s fund rules say the same thing in the opposite direction, imposing the wait on products under two years and stating that no waiting period applies for products of two or more years duration bought before the policy starts. Bupa does not publish this waiver, so check it rather than assuming it.

For a couple planning a family during a master’s degree, buying the full visa duration in one policy rather than renewing a twelve month policy twice is the difference between cover and no cover. That is not a marketing point. It is in the fund rules.

Two more mechanics. If you switch insurer, portability rules mean that after twelve months with your old fund the new one can impose no more than twelve months on any higher benefits, and under twelve months your unserved waiting periods simply carry across, so switching mid degree rarely resets you to zero. And if you fall behind on premiums, an insurer must give you 60 days from your paid to date before terminating the policy, but it does not have to pay for anything treated during those arrears until you clear them.

What are the rules for your partner and children?

Home Affairs is unambiguous. Every member of your family must have health insurance, and if you hold a single policy and have family members, including a child born in Australia after you arrive, you should move to a family policy. A family member who joins you later has to show Home Affairs their own OSHC covering the duration of their stay, which means the arithmetic in the duration section applies to them separately.

The money is the shock. On the direct quotes we ran for 1 February 2027 to 15 March 2029, single cover was AUD 1,452.42 to AUD 1,568.71, a couple was AUD 11,116.81 from Allianz Care, AUD 13,073.10 from Medibank and AUD 14,487.20 from ahm, and a family was AUD 33,264.45 from ahm and AUD 34,834.55 from Medibank. For a single student the spread between insurers was about AUD 116. For a couple it was over AUD 3,300. Family cover is the one case where shopping between insurers, and between the direct and university channels, genuinely changes your budget rather than your pocket money.

Two practical points follow. Get the family quote before you decide whether to bring anybody, because it will not be a rounding error against tuition. And check the university channel first for a family, since the education partner rates above were less than half the retail price for the same insurer. What a family actually costs to keep in Australia sits on our cost of living in Australia guide.

Can you get a refund if your visa is refused or you leave early?

Yes, and the grounds are close to identical at every insurer, because they flow from the deed the insurers sign with the Commonwealth. Reading nib’s and Allianz Care’s rules side by side, both refund where you paid but never came to Australia, where you arrived late, where you paid expecting a visa or an extension that Home Affairs then refused, where you must cease studies and leave for reasons beyond your control, where you are granted permanent residence or another visa, where you were outside Australia for three continuous months or more, and where you hold overlapping cover with another insurer.

The grounds are standard. The mechanics are not, and they are where the money goes.

• Cancel before you arrive in Australia and there is no minimum period. Both nib and Allianz Care say so explicitly. A refused visa, handled before you fly, gets the whole premium back.
• Cancel after arriving and you lose up to a month. nib calculates daily pro rata with a minimum refund period of one month, and may apply a refund fee of up to one month’s premium on partial refunds. Allianz Care calculates monthly pro rata with a minimum refund of 30 days.
• Switching within the same insurer is cheaper than leaving it. nib states its refund fee does not apply to members who take out another nib policy.
• Do not close your Australian bank account. nib pays refunds to an Australian account or the original card, so closing it before the refund clears is a common and avoidable mess.
• Bank and transfer costs come out of your refund, not the insurer’s pocket.

Note the asymmetry against the rest of your visa file. The visa application charge is not refunded when an application is refused, and the details of that sit on our Subclass 500 student visa guide. Your OSHC premium, by contrast, is the one large payment in the whole process that comes back almost in full if the visa does not come through.

Does India have a reciprocal health care agreement with Australia?

No. Australia has Reciprocal Health Care Agreements with 11 governments under section 7 of the Health Insurance Act 1973, and the full list is published in the Medicare Benefits Schedule, note GN.3.9. As at 1 February 2024 those countries are Belgium, Finland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, Slovenia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Italy and Malta are limited to six months from arrival, and visitors from New Zealand and Ireland get public hospital care and PBS medicines only, not MBS services.

India is not on that list and never has been. There is no Ayushman Bharat portability, and nothing an Indian health insurer sells that Home Affairs will accept in place of OSHC. An agreement would not have got you out of buying OSHC anyway, since Home Affairs’ exception list is only Norway, Sweden and Belgium, which means a British or an Italian student holds a reciprocal agreement and still buys OSHC for the Subclass 500. The same note also records that reciprocal agreements do not cover treatment as a private patient in either a public or a private hospital.

The consequence for an Indian student is clean. Your OSHC policy is your entire health system in Australia. Budget it as such, and buy it for the length of your visa.

Sources

• Department of Home Affairs, Student visa Subclass 500 (must have and maintain adequate health insurance for the whole stay; refusal if OSHC is not provided in the form; cover must start from the day you arrive; possible refusal of entry without proof; no gap between packaged policies; the Norway, Sweden and Belgium exceptions; every family member must be covered; later joining family must show their own OSHC)
• Department of Home Affairs, Student visa grant periods (OSHC expiry is taken into account; the visa end date cannot be changed once granted; the 15 March rule, the course plus two months and course plus one month rules; the extra six months for postgraduate research)
• Department of Home Affairs, adequate health insurance and condition 8501 (you are responsible for health care debts and they may count against a future visa; Medicare restricted to permanent residents; the benefit floor; the AUD 1,000,000 annual minimum; the maximum waiting periods; the excluded treatments; portability and the 60 day arrears window)
• Australian Government, privatehealth.gov.au, Overseas Student Health Cover (the list of OSHC insurers, still naming CBHS International Health; minimum requirements set by the OSHC Deed; no general treatment such as dental, optical or physiotherapy; the AUD 50 per item and AUD 300 a year pharmaceutical floor)
• Medicare Benefits Schedule, note GN.3.9, Reciprocal Health Care Agreements (agreements with 11 governments under section 7 of the Health Insurance Act 1973; the full country list as at 1 February 2024; the six month limits for Italy and Malta; the New Zealand and Ireland restrictions; no cover as a private patient)
• nib health funds, OSHC Fund Rules, 16 June 2026 (Schedule K contribution rates for one to five years; the exclusion list including visa medicals; refund grounds and the daily pro rata mechanics; waiting periods and the two year pregnancy waiver)
• nib, Overseas Student Health Cover (advertised price of AUD 679.57 per year for singles; no date based quote tool on the page)
• Allianz Care Australia, compare OSHC (pregnancy and birth waiting period applies only to policies of less than two years; pharmacy limits of AUD 500 on Standard and AUD 750 on Essentials)
• Allianz Care Australia, extend or cancel your policy (refund grounds; monthly pro rata with a minimum refund of 30 days; no minimum period if cancelled before arrival)
• Medibank, Overseas Student Health Cover (Essentials and Comprehensive benefits and pharmacy limits; Comprehensive is only available through selected universities and schools)
• ahm health insurance (ahm is a business of Medibank Private Limited ABN 47 080 890 259)
• CBHS International Health (no longer offers OSHC or OVHC; existing members continue as normal)
• Bupa, Overseas Student Health Cover (product terms and the quote flow used for the figures on this page; pharmacy up to AUD 50 per item, AUD 500 per person and AUD 1,000 per policy per calendar year)
• Monash University, Overseas Student Health Cover (Allianz Care Australia is the Monash preferred provider; waived waiting periods for pregnancy related claims on policies of two years or more; Monash receives an administration fee from Allianz Care)
• Monash University, 2026 OSHC price list (Allianz single, dual family and multi-family rates by month, before and from 1 July 2026)
• Australian National University, OSHC duration and costs (the same Allianz rate card from 1 July 2026; policy duration must match the full length of stay; refunds for unused portions; the Peoplecare and AWP Australia underwriting disclosure)
• Medibank Comprehensive OSHC, 2026 premium sheet for education partners (single, couple and family rates by month for policies from 1 May 2026 through the Medibank OSHC Access portal)
• The University of Sydney, Overseas Student Health Cover (Bupa is the preferred provider; you may use any government approved provider; University arranged cover begins one week before the course starts)
• RMIT University, health cover requirements (the offer letter carries a Medibank Comprehensive premium calculated on course and visa length; students arranging their own cover must give RMIT the details; the extra months a research visa carries)

Related reading. Start with our guide to studying in Australia, fit OSHC into the whole budget with the cost of living in Australia, get the conditions and the funds file right on the Subclass 500 student visa guide, check how long a decision takes in Australia student visa processing time, and plan what replaces your cover afterwards with the Subclass 485 post study work visa.