Health insurance and your relationship status

Everyone experiences different phases and changes throughout their life, and your relationship status is no exception. These changes come with their own ups and downs and can impact your health insurance options and costs.

So if you’re living your best single life, happily coupled up, or somewhere in between, understanding how your relationship status affects your health insurance is crucial for making informed decisions and ensuring you’re covered no matter what.

Let's start by exploring your policy options for when you’re coupling up, or de-coupling. 

When should you consider a couple’s policy?

A couple's health insurance policy can be a straightforward option for you and your partner if you’re aligned on what coverage you need and how much you’re willing to pay for private health cover.

This policy covers two adults, offering you and your partner the same level of protection for the same things. It's ideal for couples who share common goals, financial alignment, and are viewed as 'long-term' partners by health insurance standards, which usually includes married couples and de facto relationships.

For those of us who aren’t big fans of personal admin, couple’s health insurance may be more convenient than an individual policy. For example, you’ll only have one insurance premium to pay and you’ll only need to manage one policy.

¹Lifetime Health Cover (LHC) is a Government initiative aimed at encouraging people to take out private hospital cover earlier in life, and maintain it. If you don’t take out private hospital cover before 1 July after you turn 31, you’ll pay a 2% loading on top of your normal hospital premium for each year you don’t have hospital cover (up to a maximum of 70%). The loading applies for 10 years of continuous hospital cover. For every year you put off signing up for hospital cover, another 2% will be added. So if you wait until you’re 40, you’ll pay 20% more than someone on the same cover who joined when they were 31.