Lifetime Health Cover loading: your percentage and what it costs
Enter your age on the 1 July before you take out hospital cover: the loading, and its price on the cheapest policy of your state, appear at once.
Your Lifetime Health Cover loading
20 %
$246 a year on the cheapest policy in NSW and ACT, for 10 years of continuous cover.
| Your own loading | 20 % |
| Cheapest exempt policy, full premium | $1,231 |
| Loading per year | $246 |
| Over 10 years at today's premium | $2,462 |
Prepared by Radif Partners · How the figures are built · thresholds read on ato.gov.au, premiums from privatehealth.gov.au data · not tax advice
The Lifetime Health Cover loading is an extra 2 % on the hospital part of your premium for every year you were over 30 on the 1 July before you first took out hospital cover. Someone who joins at 40 pays 20 % more than a person who joined by the deadline, someone who joins at 45 pays 30 %, and the figure stops at 70 % however late you start. Your deadline is your LHC base day, the 1 July after your 31st birthday. The loading is not permanent: it is removed once you have held hospital cover for 10 continuous years, and you may spend up to 1,094 days without cover over your life without it growing. It applies to hospital cover only, never to extras, and the government rebate is not paid on it. On the cheapest single policy in New South Wales, $1,231 a year before the rebate, a 20 % loading adds $246 a year, about $2,462 over the ten loaded years at today's premium.
The rule in four lines
PrivateHealth.gov.au, the Ombudsman's consumer site, sets out the rule in a few sentences, and the ATO repeats it on its page about the loading. Read together, they come to this:
- The base day is the 1 July after your 31st birthday. Take out hospital cover before it and you never pay a loading.
- Every year you were over 30 on the 1 July before joining adds 2 %.
- The loading cannot exceed 70 %.
- It is removed after 10 years of continuous hospital cover, and you can be without cover for 1,094 days in your life without penalty.
The point that catches people is the date that counts. It is not your age on the day you sign, but your age on the 1 July before it. A person who turns 41 in August and joins in September is loaded on age 40, so 20 %, not 22 %. Joining before your next 1 July therefore stops the meter for a full year.
| Age on the 1 July before joining | Loading | Extra per year on the cheapest NSW single policy |
|---|---|---|
| 31 | 2 % | $25 |
| 35 | 10 % | $123 |
| 40 | 20 % | $246 |
| 45 | 30 % | $369 |
| 50 | 40 % | $492 |
| 55 | 50 % | $616 |
| 60 | 60 % | $739 |
| 65 | 70 % | $862 |
What the percentage costs in dollars
A percentage tells you little until you put a premium under it. The cheapest hospital policy that avoids the Medicare levy surcharge for a single person in New South Wales costs $1,231 a year before the rebate in the October 2026 data. On that premium a 30 % loading, the figure for someone joining at 45, adds $369 a year. Over the ten loaded years it comes to about $3,694 at today's price, and more in practice, since premiums rose 4.41 % on average on 1 April 2026.
The loading follows the policy you choose. On a Gold hospital policy at three or four times the price of a Basic one, the same percentage costs three or four times as much. That is one reason late joiners often start with a cheap policy that is enough to avoid the surcharge, then move up once the ten years have passed. Moving up does not restart the count.
Your loading on a couple policy
Loading on your couple policy
17 %
| Your own loading | 28 % |
| Partner's loading | 6 % |
| Cheapest exempt policy, full premium | $2,462 |
| Loading per year | $419 |
Couples and families: the loading is averaged
On a policy that covers two adults, the insurer averages the two loadings. PrivateHealth.gov.au gives the case of Lukas, who joins at 41 with a loading of 22 %, and his partner Noor, who has held cover since her twenties and has none. Their couple policy carries 11 %.lhc(41), 0)}. The same averaging covers every adult on the policy. PrivateHealth.gov.au gives the case of Lucy, a dependant with a disability who joins her parents' family cover at 33 with her own 6 %: spread across three adults, the family policy carries 2 %.
Gaps: the 1,094 days
Once you hold hospital cover after your base day, you can drop it for up to 1,094 days in total across your life, roughly three years, without any change. If you cancel to live overseas for at least a year, the days abroad do not count towards them, and neither do days on a suspension your insurer approves. Past the allowance, the loading resumes: 2 % on top of what you had, plus 2 % for every further year without cover. The details are on the days of absence page.
Exceptions that change your base day
New arrivals in Australia are given time. If you were not eligible for full Medicare cover on your base day, you have until the later of that day and the first anniversary of your full Medicare registration to take out hospital cover without a loading; the new migrants page has the dates. Australian citizens and permanent residents who were overseas on their base day have until the first anniversary of their return, and short trips home of up to 90 days do not end their time abroad (see returning from overseas). People born on or before 1 July 1934 are exempt altogether.
Your insurer is the one that applies the loading, from the information you give and from a transfer certificate when you switch funds. When you switch, your former insurer must give you a clearance certificate within 14 days, and that document carries your loading and your dates. If you think your percentage is wrong, ask the insurer which dates it used and compare them with the Ombudsman rules.
How the figures on this page are built
The rule comes from PrivateHealth.gov.au (Ombudsman), Lifetime Health Cover and ATO, Lifetime health cover loading, both read on 19 October 2026. The premiums come from the PrivateHealth.gov.au product file of 1 October 2026, published on data.gov.au under a Creative Commons licence: we keep the open hospital policies whose excess stays within the surcharge limits and take the cheapest one per state and cover type. The method page lists every filter.