Visa Refusals and Appeals
Health Waivers: When the Health Requirement Can Be Set Aside
Written and reviewed by the Reliance Law Group immigration team · Published 9 September 2026
The health requirement refuses more visas than most people expect, and it does it in a way that feels deeply unfair. You can meet every other criterion, have a genuine relationship or a real job offer, and still be refused because of a condition you did not choose and in many cases cannot change.
What is less well known is that for a large number of visas the health requirement can be waived. Whether that option exists for you comes down to a single detail in the regulations, and it is worth checking before you accept a refusal as the end of the matter.
Two criteria, and only one of them can be waived
Australian visas apply one of two public interest criteria on health. Which one applies is set by the regulations for your visa subclass, not by your circumstances.
| Criterion | Waiver available | Typical application |
|---|---|---|
|
PIC 4005 |
No |
Most permanent skilled visas and a number of other subclasses |
|
PIC 4007 |
Yes |
Partner and family visas, refugee and humanitarian visas, and a range of temporary visas |
If your visa carries PIC 4005 and you do not meet the health requirement, there is no waiver to apply for. The options are different visas, or in narrow circumstances ministerial intervention. If your visa carries PIC 4007, a waiver is available and the case becomes about persuasion rather than eligibility.
Check which criterion applies to your subclass before anything else. It is the difference between a case you can argue and a case you cannot.
The 482 point most published material gets wrong
A great deal of online content states that employer sponsored applicants have no health waiver. For the subclass 482 Skills in Demand visa that is not right. The regulations apply PIC 4007 to it, which means a waiver is available.
This matters commercially. A sponsored worker with a health condition, or more commonly a dependent family member with one, is often told the application is hopeless. It usually is not. It is a case that needs a waiver submission rather than a different plan. If you are the sponsoring employer, that distinction is worth tens of thousands of dollars in recruitment costs you do not have to write off.
How the cost assessment works
Your medical examinations go to a Medical Officer of the Commonwealth. They form a view on whether your condition is likely to result in significant cost to the Australian community, or prejudice the access of Australian citizens and permanent residents to health care or community services in short supply.
The significant cost threshold is $86,000. Costs are assessed over a defined period based on your circumstances and the nature of the condition, and they are hypothetical. This is the part applicants find hardest to accept: the assessment asks what a person with your condition would notionally cost, not what you personally will cost.
That means private health insurance does not solve it. Neither does an undertaking to pay your own way, or evidence that you have never used the public system. The assessment is about the notional cost of the condition to the community, and your personal arrangements do not remove it.
The Medical Officer’s opinion on cost is binding on the decision maker. The delegate cannot substitute their own view about whether the condition is serious or the costing is fair. What the delegate can do, where PIC 4007 applies, is waive the requirement anyway.
What the waiver actually asks
The waiver question is not whether the costing was right. It is whether granting the visa would be unlikely to result in undue cost to the Australian community, or undue prejudice to access to health care and community services.
The word doing the work is undue. Cost is already established by the time you get here. Your task is to show that the cost, in the context of everything else your presence brings, is not excessive.
A strong waiver submission usually covers:
- Compassionate circumstances, particularly the effect on Australian citizen or permanent resident family members if the visa is refused
- What the family contributes, including employment, tax paid, business ownership and any care provided to other family members
- Whether the family will realistically meet costs privately, which is not determinative but is still relevant to the weighing
- The severity and trajectory of the condition, including specialist evidence where the Medical Officer's assumptions are more pessimistic than your treating doctors' view
- Any support available through family rather than public services
- The consequences of refusal for children, including where a child would be separated from a parent
Specialist evidence from your treating doctors is often the most useful single element, because standard costings are built on assumptions about a condition in general rather than about your management of it in particular. Where your prognosis or care needs differ from the assumption, say so and evidence it.
One thing worth being clear about: there is no departmental mechanism for lodging a formal bond or enforceable undertaking to support a health waiver. You may see this suggested. There is no published basis for it, and a submission built on it will not help.
One fails, all fail
The health requirement applies to every applicant, and in most cases to family members who are not migrating with you. If one person in the application does not meet it, the whole application is affected.
This catches families constantly. The primary applicant is fine, and the refusal arrives because of a child’s diagnosis or a spouse’s condition. If your visa carries PIC 4007, the waiver applies to that situation in the same way it applies to anything else.
Timing, and why early matters
Health assessments are among the slower parts of processing, and a referral for further testing adds months. If you know a condition exists, the worst approach is to hope it passes unnoticed. It will not, and the case is much weaker when a waiver submission is assembled in a rush after an adverse assessment lands.
Where a condition is known in advance, the better sequence is to obtain the specialist evidence first, make the health declaration accurately, and have the waiver material ready to lodge as soon as the assessment comes back. Applicants who do it in that order get faster decisions and better ones.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. The subclass 482 carries PIC 4007, so a waiver is available. A lot of published material says otherwise and it is wrong on this point.
No. The assessment is of notional cost to the Australian community, and it is made whether or not you hold insurance. Insurance can be mentioned in a waiver submission, but it does not remove the finding.
It is $86,000. If the assessed cost of your condition over the relevant period exceeds that figure, you are taken not to meet the health requirement, and the question becomes whether a waiver is available and should be granted.
It means the application does not meet the health requirement, because the requirement applies to every applicant. Whether that leads to refusal depends on whether your visa allows a waiver and how strong the waiver case is. Many families in this position do get visas.
You can say so, and it forms part of the picture, but it does not answer the legal test. There is no formal undertaking or bond that can be lodged to guarantee it.
Longer than a standard decision, because the file goes through the health assessment and then a separate discretionary consideration. Plan for months rather than weeks, and lodge the waiver material as early as you reasonably can.
Speak to an immigration lawyer
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