Cracking the code on the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card

Kane: Hello everyone, and welcome to Super Insider, Australian Retirement Trust’s podcast on all things superannuation, investments and retirement. My name is Kane. As you might have noticed, I'm filling in for our regular host Anne today and we've got one of our regular guests joining us, Mr. Justin Bott, from Services Australia. Welcome, Justin.

Justin: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here as always.

Kane: Wonderful. So we're going to dive into all things Commonwealth Seniors Health Card today. And that's why we've got the expert, Mr. Justin Bott along. Now, before we go into today's episode, just be aware that anything you hear from us today is general advice or general information only. You absolutely need to consider if any of this is appropriate for your own situation. And don't forget, you can go and consult a financial adviser or the experts at Services Australia as well.

Now, if you want to have a go back and have a look at any of our previous episodes, you can do that through Super Insider. Alternatively, subscribe if you're a first-time listener or hit the bell if you're watching us on YouTube.

Mr. Justin Bott is the guru when it comes to this. So, let's jump into it. What is a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card?

Justin: Commonwealth Seniors Health Card is an income tested concession card that basically the name covers it, designed to help you cover some of your medical costs. We're talking about prescriptions or doctor's visits, for older Australians. So, people basically are over age, pension age.

Kane: So, if I want to spell it out in black and white, who can get a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card?

Justin: The first thing is you have got to be, is age pension age, which is 67 years of age. You've got to meet our residency requirements, as you do for most of the payments and services you get from Services Australia, and you've got to make the income test. But the big difference is the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card doesn't have an assets test.

There may be a group of people who aren’t eligible for something like a pension because their assets may be too high, who may well be eligible for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, and might not realise that they can still get access to reduced prescriptions, because they should be able to claim that Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. So over age pension age, meet the residence requirements, income test.

If you are a single person as at April 2025, that's $99,025 in assessable income, to be eligible for a single person. It's $158,440 a year as a member of a couple, you actually add $639.60 if you've got any children in your care. That's your income test requirement. It's pretty simple - if your income’s under that, we can give it to you. If it's over that, we can't.

Now you can't get a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card if you're already getting a payment from Services Australia or Department of Veterans Affairs. And that's basically because you're getting a concession card through Services Australia, Department of Veterans Affairs. So that's where your concessional benefit’s going to come from.

Kane: Okay. Now if I've got one of these Commonwealth Seniors Health Cards, what benefits can I get?

Justin: It's really the same medical benefits that you can receive from a pensioner concession card. It gives you access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme level of medicines, which is $7.70 instead of the standard $31.60 that everybody else has to pay. Also, if you have a lot of medicines, it can get you to a point where you don't have to pay anything at all, quicker, because you've got that concession card.

You may be able to access bulk billing, but there are no promises on that one, because actually bulk billing is up to the doctors to decide if they do or don't do that. That's not a requirement. If you get either a pensioner concession card or a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, it doesn't guarantee bulk billing is available for you.

There's also a refund of medical costs for doctor's visits - that it's cheaper doctor's visits if it's over bulk billing rates, that you can pay less with doctor visits as well. Now that's where Federal Government support is available. There's other supports that may be available by state by state. So, you've got the government level of support services, but then you have the state level support services.

Queensland is different in New South Wales. It's different to Tasmania. But they all may still provide extra services for you depending on if you do or don't have that Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. The best thing that you should do is actually look at each state government. So go to the state government website, have a look at the concessions, and it will tell you if you've got a pensioner concession card what can you access - Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, what are the concessional benefits you might be able to access. But because it's state by state, it's very varied and different.

Kane: Of course, now here at Super Insider, we're all about making sure that our listeners can have the best retirement possible. So if I've got that Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, how can how can that help me make the most of my retirement?

Justin: Well, because of your medical costs, it would definitely be cheaper - big deduction in the prescriptions, like $25 less per prescription. So you've got that benefit - taking advantage of whatever the state government's offer for you. All of that is adding up. All of that is less money that you're spending. If you're reaching the PBS safety net or you're reaching the Medicare safety nets, you get access to that quicker because you got those concession cards. So you're paying, again, less for those medical costs - and all of that comes together.

The nice thing about the Commonwealth Senior Health Card as well is that you have a physical copy if you want, but you can also have an online or digital copy. So your phone is going to have everything you need - you can get your Medicare card on your phone, your concession card on your phone. You've now got that ability to have all your concessional benefits in your pocket, ready to go without having to have the wallet with the really big pocket, all the little cards inside there too. All of that's just designed to make life easier for people that are over age pension age.

Kane: Wonderful. Now how do I apply for it?

Justin: The best thing to do to find all information about our payments and concessions is our website servicesaustralia.gov.au - It tells you about the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card and the quickest way to apply is online through your myGov account, linked to your Centrelink record.

Now most of us already have a myGov account because we needed it as part of the pandemic, proof of vaccinations, but we may not have linked it to our Centrelink record. So, you go to my.gov.au, if you’ve never done this sort of thing before. The website is my.gov.au - it tells you the process of setting up a myGov account and then linking it for Centrelink. That's the easiest way. And the reason that it's the easiest way is when you do an online application, it's intuitive in that it doesn't ask you a whole lot of questions that you don't need to answer. So, if I say no to this, that then cuts off 16 potential other questions that may have come from it.

Because the other way, if you're not an online sort of person and you don't want to do it over the phone, which is perfectly fine, you can download a paper copy. You can get a paper copy at your customer service center, and you can fill it in. From filling it in, obviously, is that you've got all the questions are there because we're covering all the options.

If you're an online sort of person and you're happy to use your phone, then absolutely recommend doing that. MyGov account links to your Centrelink record. And then you look for that new claims options. And that'll take you through the process.

There is one other tip that I want to tell people about for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. If you lodge an application, you can apply for these early. But if you lodge an application for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card after you've become eligible, between the time that you're eligible to get it and the time you actually physically receive the card, and we've shown you that you're eligible for it, keep your prescriptions that you purchased in that period of time, because when you get the card, it's going to be dated back to the time that you originally became eligible. So that might be three weeks in the past or whatever it might be.

With the prescriptions and the card backdated, you can then fill in a form through Medicare and get those discounts for those prescriptions during the time that you're waiting for when you've lodged the claim and applied, to when you actually received the card – so keep the prescriptions. You can still get the benefit of the card even though you don't physically have it with you yet, but it's just a form that you need to fill in with Medicare.

Kane: All right. Sounds good. There's lots of avenues to be able to apply for it. Now obviously we're focusing in this episode today about the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. We won't go into detail, but I just want to throw it to you, you know, are there other types of cards out there?

Justin: Absolutely. And there's a few. We can understand why people might be a bit confused about which there are. The first main one that people are going to be thinking about is your pensioner concession cards, the blue one that you get if you're getting a pension, whether that be an age pension, whether that be, disability support pension, carer payment. It's the same pensioner concession card, same medical benefits that you get with the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. Then there's other ones that come from that, that you might be able to get through other way through other kinds, other concession cards that are out there. But that's like the transport concessions, reduced council rates, water rates, those sorts of things.

There's also something called a low-income health care card. You can apply for a Commonwealth Health Card and a low-income health care card if you meet the requirements of both, you can apply for both. They provide the same medical benefits. If you're thinking, “Well, if I get the same medical benefits, why would I bother getting both?” The reason is not because of what the Federal Government provides, but what state governments provide. The state concessions may be better for one concession or different from one concession over the other. So it may be worth having both in your pocket - you can apply for both. It’s not about again the medical, but about whatever the states offer for you.

The thing about the low-income health care card is it's in the title - it is a low income card. The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card - there's no assets test with the income test is actually quite high, $99,000 for a single person, $150,000 or so, for a member of a couple. For low-income health care card, we're looking at $786 a week if you're a single person and $1,343 a week combined if you're a member of a couple so very low-income threshold in order to do that. But again, neither of them have an assets test. So it might be that I have high assets but no income. Low-income health care card is there for me as well.

We talked about the benefits states can provide. That's generally through a thing called a Seniors card. States and territories have their Seniors cards, which have their own rules about how you apply. They may be able to do things like transport concessions, reduce train travel, reduce movies. There might be discounts in particular shops – so you look for the stickers in the windows that say that Seniors cards are welcome here again, that's a state by state based benefit, so look at your state government website in order to get that.

And the last one, if you're a veteran, then you've got your gold cards and your veterans cards through that system as well, including ones that you can apply for separately. But you have to be a veteran in order to access those. So that's the Department of Veterans Affairs, to check out the full list of concession cards that they've got. DVA.gov.au is their website to have a look for those as well.

Kane: Beautiful. Now, before we wrap up, if anyone's interested, Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, where should I go for more information or to recap on the information that you've shared today and to take those next steps?

Justin: So, for the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card - servicesaustralia.gov.au, you can either search Commonwealth Seniors Health Card. On the front panel you'll find one that's aging. If you click on that, then that will actually take you through to not just about the pension and the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card, but other services and support that's available for older Australians.

Kane: Thanks for sharing that one. And thank you again for joining us, Justin.

Justin: Always a pleasure to be here.

Kane: Wonderful. That's all we've got time for today. So thank you for tuning in to this episode of Super Insider. As always, make sure you consider your own situation, access financial advice, lean on those resources that you heard Justin mention around Services Australia and all the help that they offer you. If you please subscribe to Super Insider if you like what you hear, and you'll be notified when new episodes come out.

And if you're watching us on YouTube, don't forget to hit that bell, subscribe and follow us. So thank you, everyone, for your time, and we'll see you next time on Super Insider.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.