Services Australia (Medicare)
Applies the ruleThe Commonwealth agency that runs Medicare, enrols people in it and pays Medicare benefits under the Health Insurance Act 1973. Its pages are the only published place that names the countries Australia has a Reciprocal Health Care Agreement with: the Act authorises those agreements in section 7 and names none of them, and the Health Insurance Regulations 2018 do not mention them at all. Each page prints the date it was last updated and a QC number.
The body that applies the rule and decides applications. It publishes what it requires, which is authoritative about its own practice but is not the text of the law.
www.servicesaustralia.gov.auCannot be cited for
It states what the agency does, not what the law says, and it is not an instrument: a page describing eligibility is the agency's reading of the Health Insurance Act 1973 and of the agreements, and where the two differ the Act and the agreement govern. The country count on the landing page is not a list - the names are on a separate page which could not be read from here. It cannot be cited for anything outside Medicare, Centrelink and Child Support, and it is not a source for the text of any reciprocal agreement, which is published in the Australian Treaty Series.
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- www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/when-reciprocal-health-care-agreements-apply-and-you-visit-australia
last read 2026-10-11