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Health insurance for young adults
Take advantage of a youth discount with health insurance for young people.
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I'm Tim, your insurance expert.
Here to help you find the right cover for you!
Step 1/2 - About your cover
Which state do you live in?
QLD
NSW
ACT
VIC
TAS
SA
WA
NT
What's your age?
Depending on your age, you may be eligible for an
aged-based discount. This is used to estimate your
rebate.
Under 65
65 - 69
70 or older
What's your household's taxable income?
This is the combined income you and your spouse earn before tax. It's needed to calculate the correct Australian government rebate.
$93,000 and under
$93,001 to $108,000
$108,001 to $144,000
$144,001 and over
What kind of health insurance do you need?
Combined (Extras + Hospitals)
Extras
Hospital
What level of hospital coverage would you like?
You can change this at any time later.
Legend
Covered
Restricted cover, You may be partially covered for
this category.
Not covered. Optional for insurer to include.
*Prices updated October 2024, in line with Finder's database of health insurance policies. Prices reflect the cheapest available for a single individual with less than $97,000 income and living in Sydney with a $750 excess.
What extras cover do you need? (Optional)
Select as many as you want or move to the next step
Preventative & general dental
Major dental & implants
Optical
Physiotherapy
Podiatry
Non-PBS pharmaceuticals
Chiropractic
Emergency ambulance
Remedial massage
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Hospital cover can help pay for treatments that require you to go to hospital, like knee surgery or cancer treatment. Here are some of the key benefits of hospital cover:
Hospital trips are more common than you think. 25 to 34 years olds are the most common 10-year age group to need to go to the emergency department, according to the Emergency Department Care Report 2015-2016.
Avoid Lifetime Health Cover (LHC) loading. By taking out hospital cover before your 31st birthday, you can avoid paying extra for cover thanks to the LHC.
More freedom. You get to choose your own doctor and you can get a private bed in a private room.
Get treatment quickly. Waiting times for treatments are usually much shorter.
Care beyond the basics provided by Medicare. It can get you cover for specialist treatment like rehabilitation.
Extras cover
Extras cover takes care of all the services that can be done out of hospital, like dental, physio and prescription glasses. Here are some of the key benefits of extras cover:
Out of hospital care. It can pay for dental treatment, glasses, physiotherapy, chiro and much more.
There's usually no lock-in contract. The beauty of extras cover is that you can usually cancel and you won't be charged a cancellation fee.
Access to care Medicare doesn't cover. Medicare doesn't cover extras services so unless you want to pay hundreds of dollars for treatment, you need extras health insurance.
Mental health support. It can also cover you for counselling sessions with a psychologist if you need to talk to someone.
Access to member discounts. Most policies come with perks, like gym membership subsidies, to help you keep fit and healthy, and save both you and your provider money.
Ambulance cover
If you don't want or need hospital or extras health insurance, it might still be worth taking out ambulance-only health insurance. Outside of Queensland and Tasmania, Ambulance services aren't covered by Medicare or state governments. Ambulance cover is available from around $1.50 a week, and will cover you for unexpected emergency trips.
Cheap hospital cover
If you're looking for cheap hospital cover for tax, you might want to avoid Basic tier policies and start with at least Bronze cover. It's just a few dollars more per month, and actually offers some coverage. Basic cover isn't required to fully cover any treatments, so it's generally not going to be very useful.
Here are some Bronze tier policies from Finder partners. All of these will exempt you from the Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS) and the Lifetime Health Cover loading (LHC). All prices are based on a single individual with less than $97,000 income and living in Sydney.
If you're after cheap extras cover, you could do worse than to start with these policies from Finder partners. It's sorted by value using the Finder score algorithm our experts use for the Finder health insurance awards. Prices are for a single person earning less than $97,000 living in Sydney, with a $750 excess - learn why this matters here.
The Finder Score ranks every health policy in our database on value for money. We updated this monthly with data provided by Ombudsman.
We consider the 38 hospital treatment categories, plus the covered extras categories and the total extras benefit. We also use the average price for each product. Here's the breakdown of factors we consider.
Factors that affect your health insurance premiums
There are several factors that will change the price of your health insurance premiums, whether you get hospital or extras cover. Here are the main ones to consider.
Private Health Insurance Rebate: The price of your policy can vary by over 25% due to rebate. It's mainly based on your age and income.
Lifetime Health Cover Loading: If you don't have hospital cover after age 31, a 2% loading will be added to the price each year you don't have it.
State: The cost of medical care is different in every state, and that's reflected in your premiums.
Policy Excess: A policy with a larger excess will have lower premiums, but you will have more out of pocket costs when you claim.
Depending on your age, you may be eligible for an
aged-based discount. This is used to estimate your
rebate.
Under 65
65 - 69
70 or older
What's your household's taxable income?
This is the combined income you and your spouse earn before tax. It's needed to calculate the correct Australian government rebate.
$93,000 and under
$93,001 to $108,000
$108,001 to $144,000
$144,001 and over
What kind of health insurance do you need?
Combined (Extras + Hospitals)
Extras
Hospital
What level of hospital coverage would you like?
You can change this at any time later.
Legend
Covered
Restricted cover, You may be partially covered for
this category.
Not covered. Optional for insurer to include.
*Prices updated March 2024, in line with Finder's
database of health insurance policies. Prices are based
on a single individual with less than $93,000 income and
living in Sydney with a $750 excess.
What extras cover do you need? (Optional)
Select as many as you want or move to the next step
Preventative & general dental
Major dental & implants
Optical
Physiotherapy
Podiatry
Non-PBS pharmaceuticals
Chiropractic
Emergency ambulance
Remedial massage
Email me my results (optional)
To get a copy of your results for later, add your email below
Hospital health insurance comes in 4 tiers in Australia: basic, bronze, silver and gold. Each tier covers a higher number of treatments in a private hospital and generally have higher premiums. Young adults will have a variety of needs, so it's hard to say which tier you should go for. For example, bronze policies may cover most accidents or illnesses commonly experienced by young adults, but pregnancy and childbirth is only covered until silver plus and gold policies. Check out our page on hospital health insurance tiers to learn more.
Gary Ross Hunter was an editor at Finder, specialising in insurance. He’s been writing about life, travel, home, car, pet and health insurance for over 6 years and regularly appears as an insurance expert in publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian and news.com.au. Gary holds a Kaplan Tier 2 General Advice General Insurance certification which meets the requirements of ASIC Regulatory Guide 146 (RG146). See full bio
Gary Ross's expertise
Gary Ross has written 651 Finder guides across topics including:
Tim Bennett is a Finder insurance & utilities expert. For over 10 years he's reported on news, politics, finance and other topics as a journalist and radio presenter. Tim's roles have included radio news reader and breakfast at the ABC, news producer for SBS and producer for Fairfax Media. Tim regularly appears as a health insurance expert on programs like Sunrise and SBS news, as well as in the Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Courier Mail and more. See full bio
Tim's expertise
Tim has written 119 Finder guides across topics including:
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We try to take an open and transparent approach and provide a broad-based comparison service. However, you should be aware that while we are an independently owned service, our comparison service does not include all providers or all products available in the market.
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We update our data regularly, but information can change between updates. Confirm details with the provider you're interested in before making a decision.
Depending on your age, you may be eligible for an
aged-based discount. This is used to estimate your
rebate.
Under 65
65 - 69
70 or older
What's your household's taxable income?
This is the combined income you and your spouse earn before tax. It's needed to calculate the correct Australian government rebate.
$93,000 and under
$93,001 to $108,000
$108,001 to $144,000
$144,001 and over
What kind of health insurance do you need?
Combined (Extras + Hospitals)
Extras
Hospital
What level of hospital coverage would you like?
You can change this at any time later.
Legend
Covered
Restricted cover, You may be partially covered for
this category.
Not covered. Optional for insurer to include.
*Prices updated March 2024, in line with Finder's
database of health insurance policies. Prices are based
on a single individual with less than $93,000 income and
living in Sydney with a $750 excess.
What extras cover do you need? (Optional)
Select as many as you want or move to the next step
Preventative & general dental
Major dental & implants
Optical
Physiotherapy
Podiatry
Non-PBS pharmaceuticals
Chiropractic
Emergency ambulance
Remedial massage
Email me my results (optional)
To get a copy of your results for later, add your email below
