Couples Health Insurance

That’s a question only you and your partner can answer, but there are a few cover options to think about when choosing a suitable health insurance policy.

For example, it’s worth taking a close look at what types of hospital treatment are included in the different tiers of hospital cover. Each tier has to cover certain treatments at a minimum, with a gold policy covering the most and a basic policy covering the least. If insurers throw in a few bonus treatments on top of the mandatory minimum, they put a ‘plus’ in the policy name. For example, if you’re planning to start a family, cover for pregnancy and birth-related services is found in gold policies, or occasionally silver plus. Or if you might need dental surgery (sorry!), you’ll find it in gold or silver policies, or potentially in bronze plus.

And don’t forget extras! These don’t have set tiers like hospital cover, so each policy might have different inclusions. If you’re both into sports or keeping a healthy set of pearly whites, you might be interested in an extras policy that covers things such as physio or dental check-ups.

The key is to shop around and compare policies to find one that suits both of your lifestyles, your budget, and your future plans. It’s not a one-size-fits-all deal, so take the time to figure out what’s important for you and your partner.

Nope, your eligibility for couples cover doesn’t depend on whether or not you’re married. This policy can include two adults living together as partners.

And if you’re in an LDR (long-distance relationship) – whether it’s for work, study, family commitments, or even health treatment – you may still be able to hold a couples policy together.

It depends on your income, not your relationship status. If you’re hoping to avoid paying the Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS) you only need to meet one of two criteria. You can either aim to have an appropriate level of hospital cover (for couples and families, it’s an excess of $1,500 or less), or your combined family income needs to be below the income threshold. For 2025–26, your combined income needs to be less than $202,000.

So, while it might feel like an enormous task to search for or update your couples health insurance, it could pay off come tax time. You can use our handy Medicare Levy Surcharge calculator to figure out whether taking out private hospital cover could help you and your partner avoid the MLS.

For singles with health insurance, Lifetime Health Cover (LHC) loading is fairly straightforward. It’s based on your age; specifically, every 1 July after your 31st birthday that you didn’t have hospital cover. But it gets a little trickier when you’re dealing with two people on the same policy.

For couples, your LHC loading is the average of your individual loadings (even if one of you has a 0% loading). So, say you have a loading of 2% while your partner’s is 6%. The average – and what you’d be paying on top of your couples health insurance – is 4%.

To avoid this, couples young and old alike may want to get covered sooner rather than later.

When you’re divorced, it doesn’t have to mean your former partner is completely out of your life. For instance, you might share children or fur babies, or even continue to live together.

Unfortunately, you mightn’t be able to keep sharing your couples health insurance. Each insurer has its own definition of a couple; some include divorced couples while others don’t.

If you still wanted to have shared health insurance with your kids, you could look at single-parent family policies.

Couples health insurance could be a step you take when you’re looking to grow your family, like getting cover to help with the pregnancy and birth. However, once your baby is born (or if your baby is already walking and talking), it’s unlikely you’ll be able to add them to the same shared policy as it won’t just be insuring a couple anymore.

If you still want to keep things streamlined and everyone on the same cover, you may instead be able to switch to family health insurance. You can then continue to add dependents and children to the policy if you’re looking to expand your family further.

Legally, a health insurer can’t refuse to insure you simply because of a pre-existing condition. While this is a big win for everyone’s health, you might want to pause the celebrations before breaking out the champagne, as you’ll likely have a waiting period before you start claiming (unless you’ve already served that waiting period with another insurer). For hospital cover, you won’t have to serve more than a 12-month waiting period before you can claim for hospital treatment. For extras cover, your insurer can set any length of waiting period and pre-existing conditions aren’t a factor.

If you’re taking out a new policy with your partner and one of you has a pre-existing condition, it’s usually only that person who would have to wait out the pre-existing waiting period before they can claim, rather than both of you. It really all depends on the policy, so don’t be afraid to speak with your insurer or go through your policy documents.