OSHC: what Overseas Student Health Cover covers on an Australian student visa

OSHC, or Overseas Student Health Cover, is the Australian health insurance that a subclass 500 student visa holder must buy from a government-approved provider and keep active for the whole visa period. It is a visa condition, not an optional extra.

Six insurers are allowed to sell it, and no one else can. The Department of Home Affairs states that you and your family members "must be covered by Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC) from an approved Australian health insurance provider, unless an 'Exception' applies", and that the application is refused outright if the policy details are missing: "If you don't provide your OSHC in your application form, we will refuse your visa application."

The part students underestimate is the calendar. Your cover must start the day you land, not the day classes begin, and it must run to the end of the visa, which the same page describes as "up to 6 years and in line with your enrolment". A gap in cover is a breach of a visa condition, not an administrative detail.

The second thing worth knowing early: OSHC is a substitute for Medicare, not a travel policy. It pays for hospital and medical treatment in Australia, plus ambulance and limited pharmaceuticals. It does not refund a cancelled flight, replace a stolen laptop or fly you home. That distinction runs through this whole page.

Updated: 2 September 2026. Australian rules verified the same day on Department of Home Affairs and privatehealth.gov.au sources; insurance quotes captured on that date and shown in Australian dollars.

OSHC is required because the subclass 500 visa carries condition 8501. The official Home Affairs document listing the affected visas states that "condition 8501 in Schedule 8 of the Migration Regulations 1994 states that the visa holder must maintain adequate arrangements for health insurance while the holder is in Australia".

On that list, subclass 500 Student is marked (m) for mandatory, which the document defines as a condition that applies "to the visa by operation of law at the time of visa grant". Nobody decides to attach it to your visa and nobody can remove it afterwards.

The reason behind the rule is financial. The Home Affairs adequate health insurance guidance is blunt about who pays if you are uninsured: "You are financially responsible for any health care debts you incur in Australia. We might consider any outstanding health debts you have if you apply for a visa in future." It adds that "in the majority of cases, visitors to Australia do not have access to Medicare, and are therefore responsible for all costs associated with hospital, medical and para-medical health care rendered in Australia".

Only six registered health insurers can sell OSHC. privatehealth.gov.au, the Australian Government's private health insurance site, states that OSHC "is offered by certain insurers under a Deed of Agreement with the Department of Health and Aged Care" and that "only a small number of registered health insurers offer OSHC".

Your education provider can arrange the policy for you. Home Affairs notes that "your education provider or agent might arrange OSHC for you", in which case the insurer name and the policy dates appear on your Confirmation of Enrolment and you simply copy the policy number into the visa application. If you arrange it yourself, you need that policy number before you can submit.

We do not publish OSHC premiums on this page. Prices are set by each of the six insurers, vary by single, couple and family membership and by the length of the policy, and no Australian Government source publishes a comparable figure we could verify. Quoting a number we cannot stand behind, on a product your visa depends on, is worse than quoting none.

Your OSHC must cover the entire visa period, start on the day you arrive in Australia and run with no gap until you leave. The Department of Home Affairs student visa (subclass 500) page is explicit: "You and your family members must have and maintain adequate health insurance for the whole of your stay in Australia."

1. Before you apply : buy the policy and pay for it. You "must include proof of paid adequate health insurance for the proposed duration of your visa", and a missing OSHC means refusal.
2. Set the start date to your arrival date : "your cover must start from the day you and your family arrive in Australia, not the day your course starts". Students often land one week to one month before classes, and that window has to be inside the policy.
3. Do not land before the policy begins : Home Affairs asks you to "ensure you don't enter Australia before your OSHC begins", and warns you may be refused entry without proof of cover.
4. Cover the whole grant period : the subclass 500 can run "up to 6 years and in line with your enrolment", so a one-year policy on a three-year degree leaves two years to renew.
5. Renew with no gap : for applicants already in Australia, "cover must be continuous with no gap between your previous health cover and your OSHC".
6. Maintain it to the end : "maintain your OSHC until you leave Australia". When the student visa expires you are no longer eligible to hold OSHC and switch to another product.

Who is exempt from OSHC

The exemption list is short and nationality-based. Home Affairs states you do not need OSHC if you are "a Norwegian student covered by the Norwegian National Insurance Scheme", "a Swedish student covered by Kammarkollegiet" or "a Belgian student covered under the Reciprocal Health Care Agreement with Australia". Everyone else buys OSHC.

Reciprocal Health Care Agreements are a separate matter and a common source of confusion. privatehealth.gov.au lists students from the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, Italy and New Zealand as able to apply for Medicare under those agreements, then states the rule that settles it: "Having reciprocal access to Medicare does not exempt you from needing to take out OSHC."

OSHC covers hospital and medical treatment in Australia, ambulance transport and a limited pharmaceutical benefit. It is built to stand in for Medicare, so the shape of the cover follows the public system rather than a travel policy.

The Home Affairs adequate health insurance guidance sets out the benefit levels a compliant policy has to reach: public hospital treatment at "the state and territory health authority gazetted rates for ineligible patients", prostheses at "100 per cent of the minimum benefit amount listed", admitted medical services at "100 per cent of the Medical Benefits Schedule fee", ambulance at "100 per cent of the charge", and a floor on the total: "the per-person, per-annum benefit must not be less than AUD1,000,000".

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  Hospital admissions : accommodation, theatre, intensive care and ward drugs for an admitted episode, at the gazetted rate for ineligible patients.
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  Doctors and admitted medical services : 100% of the Medicare Benefits Schedule fee for services carrying an MBS item number.
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  Ambulance : 100% of the charge for a government-approved ambulance service when medically necessary, including inter-hospital transfers for emergency treatment.
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  Prescription medicines, within a cap : privatehealth.gov.au puts the benefit at "$50 per pharmaceutical item to a maximum of $300 a year for single membership ($600 for a family membership)".
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  A minimum annual benefit of A$1,000,000 per person : the floor set in the Home Affairs benefit-level guidance.

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  Dental, optical and physiotherapy : privatehealth.gov.au states that "OSHC does not pay for general treatment (ancillary, or extras cover) such as dental, optical or physiotherapy". Extras OSHC is sold separately by the same providers.
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  Pre-existing conditions during the waiting period : insurers may impose up to "12 months for pre-existing conditions", the maximum the Australian Government allows.
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  Pregnancy and birth for the first year : the same guidance allows a waiting period of "12 months for pregnancy and birth related treatments (obstetrics)".
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  Psychiatric care, rehabilitation and palliative care for two months : "two months for psychiatric treatments, rehabilitation or palliative care, even for a pre-existing condition", and two months in all other circumstances.
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  Treatment outside Australia : insurers are not required to cover "treatment provided outside Australia, including necessary treatment en route to or from Australia" nor "treatment arranged in advance of the insured's arrival in Australia".
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  Some treatments entirely : assisted reproductive treatments, elective cosmetic treatments, and stem cells, bone marrow and organ transplant are on the not-required list.
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  Expensive medicines outside an admission : privatehealth.gov.au warns that "you may face significant out of pocket costs if you need treatment with pharmaceuticals, particularly oncology (cancer) treatment which can cost tens of thousands of dollars".

Two structural points that surprise students. An excess or co-payment is allowed, so a compliant policy is not necessarily a policy with no out-of-pocket cost. And portability rules mean that if you switch OSHC provider, an Australian insurer must recognise your previous membership, with continuity of cover for up to 30 days from the date you leave the previous insurer.

No. HelloSafe does not sell OSHC and cannot issue a policy that satisfies condition 8501. We checked the whole catalogue on 2 September 2026 before writing this page, and the answer was the same at every level: the product class is closed to us.

• 79 travel and student policies in the comparator, and not one is an OSHC product.
• None of the six approved providers appears among the insurers behind those policies. There is an insurer called Allianz in our data, but it backs a Canadian tourism plan restricted to departures from Canada, not Allianz Care Australia.
• No Australian visa certificate feature exists on any plan. The visa-certificate field on our student flagship, World Student, is set to not available.

So this page carries no offers block and no buy button for OSHC. Selling you a general travel policy as if it satisfied an Australian visa condition would put your visa at risk, which is a strange way to earn a commission. If you need OSHC, go directly to one of the six approved providers listed above, or let your university arrange it.

No travel insurance policy replaces OSHC on a subclass 500 visa, because the visa names the product and the provider list, not the level of cover. What a travel policy does is cover the risks OSHC was never built for. The table below sets the two side by side.

Why our student plans can never be the primary cover

This is not a marketing position, it is what the contracts say. Three different insurers, three versions of the same clause, all read from the policy wordings stored in our own system.

• World Student : the insurer "shall reimburse the amount of medical expenses abroad and payable by the insured, after reimbursement by the social security or any other insurance or pension fund he is a member of". It pays second, behind OSHC.
• Go Campus : reimbursements are calculated "less any compensation or benefit of a similar nature paid by any public or private body in your country of origin or your country of residence/destination". Same mechanism, different wording.
• Cap Student : the policy expressly excludes "the percentage of the cost covered by the social security system or the local health insurance system or by any other health care coverage by which the beneficiary is covered".

There is a second, harder limit. Every student plan we can quote for Australia is a travel contract with a duration cap. World Student is worldwide "exclusively for travels of the insured abroad and under 365 days". Go Campus goes further, to 24 months, but only for residents of the European Economic Area. A three-year or six-year student visa cannot be covered end to end by any of them, and our comparator says so itself: a 24-month request to Australia returns zero plans, with the reason recorded as trip duration too long.

A student travel policy alongside OSHC costs between A$376 and A$1,873 depending on how long you stay, how old you are and where you fly from. Those are real quotes from our comparator for a stay in Australia, captured on 2 September 2026, and they are the cost of the complement, never of OSHC itself.

The pattern behind those numbers matters more than any single price. Where you are travelling from changes the shelf far more than your destination does: an Indian or Chinese student, the two largest groups on Australian campuses, sees one plan for a full year, while a French student sees four. And one profile sees nothing at all. A 36-year-old postgraduate flying from outside the European Economic Area for twelve months returns zero plans in our comparator, the age caps and the duration caps ruling out every option. If that is you, your OSHC is your cover and there is no complement we can sell you.

If you want to see how the same plans price for other destinations and trip types, the student travel insurance hub compares them across countries, and the general travel insurance guide explains how the guarantees work. Students who move on to a working holiday after graduating should read the Australian working holiday visa page, since that visa carries condition 8501 too but is not covered by OSHC.

Before you pay for OSHC, five checks catch almost every problem students report later: the provider, the dates, the membership type, the waiting periods and what is deliberately left out.

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  The provider is on the approved list : ahm, Allianz Care Australia, Bupa, CBHS International, Medibank or nib. Anything else is not OSHC.
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  The start date is your arrival date : not your course start date, and never a date after you land.
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  The end date covers the whole visa : match it to the grant period, not to the academic year.
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  The membership type matches your application : single, couple or family. Everyone included in the visa application has to be covered.
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  You have the policy number before you submit : the insurer name, the start and end dates and the number all go into the application form.

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  Do not assume dental and optical are in there : they are not, and Extras OSHC is a separate purchase from the same insurer.
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  Do not count on immediate cover for a known condition : a waiting period of up to 12 months is permitted for pre-existing conditions and for pregnancy.
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  Do not let a payment lapse : you may lose the right to claim for treatment received while you were in arrears, and you are in breach of the visa condition.
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  Do not treat Medicare access as a substitute : reciprocal access does not exempt you from holding OSHC.
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  Do not expect cover for a trip outside Australia : that is exactly the gap a travel policy fills, and the government's own page suggests it, noting you "can also choose to supplement OSHC with other insurance such as international travel insurance".

• Is OSHC compulsory for a subclass 500 student visa?

  Yes. OSHC is mandatory for the subclass 500 student visa under condition 8501, which Home Affairs applies to the visa by operation of law at grant. The application is refused if the policy details are missing, and the cover must be held for the whole stay in Australia.

• Which providers are approved to sell OSHC?

  Six insurers hold a Deed of Agreement with the Department of Health and Aged Care: ahm OSHC, Allianz Care Australia (Peoplecare), BUPA Australia, CBHS International Health, Medibank Private and NIB OSHC. privatehealth.gov.au lists them, and no other insurer can issue OSHC.

• When must my OSHC start and finish?

  It must start the day you arrive in Australia, not the day your course starts, and be maintained until you leave. Home Affairs asks you not to enter Australia before the policy begins, and warns you may be refused entry without proof of cover on arrival.

• What happens if my OSHC lapses while I am in Australia?

  You are in breach of a visa condition, and privatehealth.gov.au warns that although you can resume the policy, "you may not be able to claim for services you received while you were in arrears". For a renewal from inside Australia the cover must be continuous with no gap.

• Does OSHC cover dental, optical or physiotherapy?

  No. The Australian Government states that OSHC does not pay for general treatment such as dental, optical or physiotherapy. Extras OSHC is sold separately by the approved providers, or you can buy general treatment cover from any Australian private health insurer.

• Does OSHC cover a pre-existing condition straight away?

  Not necessarily. An Australian insurer may impose a waiting period of up to 12 months for pre-existing conditions, and up to 12 months for pregnancy and birth. Two months is the maximum in most other circumstances, including psychiatric care and rehabilitation.

• Can Medicare replace OSHC if my country has a Reciprocal Health Care Agreement?

  No. Students from the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovenia, Italy and New Zealand may apply for Medicare, but privatehealth.gov.au states plainly that having reciprocal access to Medicare does not exempt you from needing to take out OSHC.

• Who is exempt from OSHC?

  Only three groups, by nationality and scheme: Norwegian students covered by the Norwegian National Insurance Scheme, Swedish students covered by Kammarkollegiet, and Belgian students covered under the Reciprocal Health Care Agreement with Australia.

• Can I buy OSHC from HelloSafe?

  No. We hold no agreement with any of the six approved providers, none of the 79 policies in our comparator is an OSHC product, and none can satisfy condition 8501. Buy OSHC directly from an approved provider or through your education provider.

• Does travel insurance count as OSHC for my visa?

  No. The visa requires cover from an approved Australian health insurance provider, so an international travel or student policy does not satisfy the requirement whatever its limits are. It can sit alongside OSHC, never instead of it.

• Does OSHC cover me when I leave Australia during the holidays?

  Not necessarily. Australian insurers are not required to cover treatment provided outside Australia, including treatment en route to or from the country. That gap, plus baggage and repatriation, is what a complementary travel policy is for.

• How much does OSHC cost?

  Premiums are set by each approved provider and vary by membership type and policy length, so we do not publish a figure: no Australian Government source publishes comparable prices we could verify. Ask the six providers directly, or your university, for a quote covering your exact visa period.