medicareFor whatever stupid reason the Australian government classes laser eye surgery (both lasik and PRK) as ‘cosmetic surgery’. The biggest drawback of this is that you are unable to directly make a claim on medicare for the costs of the procedure.

Fortunately though Australian’s receive a 20% rebate for net medical expenses over $1500 so you are able to recover some of your costs.



1. How the rebate works

The Medicare rebate isn’t specific to laser eye surgery and covers your net medical expenses if they are over $1500.

For example if you had an out of pocket surgery procedure done that cost $3000 as well as getting laser eye surgery that cost $2000 your net medical expenses are $5000.

When you are lodging your tax return you can claim up to 20% of the out of pocket difference over $1500.

In this case $5000 – $1500 is $3500 so you would be able to claim 20% of that net difference ($3500) entitling you to an additional $700 on your tax return.

If your laser eye surgery costs alone are over $1500 then similarly you are able to claim the 20% rebate. Make sure you have receipts from your procedures though in case you get audited by the taxation office.



2. Private health insurance

Note that the rebate applies for net out of pocket expenses only. If you have private health insurance that covers part of your procedure costs the medicare rebate applies only to what you paid after your health insurance claim.

For example my private health insurance paid out $1000 per eye and my gross lasik procedure cost was $5200. This meant that although the procedure cost $5200, I was only able to claim $3200 ($1000 per eye was paid by private health insurance) on my medicare rebate.

After subtracting the $1500 threshold from $3200 I was left with a claimable amount of $1700. 20% of $1700 is $340 which isn’t much when you consider the total cost of surgery was $5200 but nonetheless it’s still money that’s in my pocket rather then somebody elses.


Just a final note which I’m sure is going to cross everybody’s mind who makes a medicare claim on their eye surgery, I would advise against trying to claim the total amount of the surgery on your claim if you made a private health insurance claim.

I did think about putting the whole surgery amount on my tax return as it brought the claimable amount up to about $700 but decided against it at the end. I figured given the tax office have access to my medicare and private health insurance records it wouldn’t be too difficult for them to pick it up and audit me.

Etax has it written in bold that you can only claim the net difference after ‘any private health insurance claims‘ so I didn’t like my chances of pulling the ‘oh but I didn’t understand’ routine to get out of it if I was audited.



Related posts that might interest you:
  1. Getting laser eye surgery done: The first consult
  2. 10 must read blog posts on laser eye surgery
  3. Getting laser eye surgery done: The second consult
  4. My one week checkup after Lasik eye surgery
  5. 5 things to ask your lasik eye surgeon before surgery