It seems a little bit funny to write about cheap eye surgery in Australia after I’ve written about cheap eye surgery in Asia and Europe since I live here.  But the fact of the matter is, everything here is not cheap. Seriously. Even the food here is at least 2 to 3 times more expensive than the food you can get in North America. The only reason why you would come to Australia is to be a plain tourist, and not a medical tourist! But for the sake of completeness (and I guess patriotism), I will try my best to find ways to get cheap eye surgery in Australia.

There are actually many LASIK clinics around Australia, most of them being situated in Sydney. In any case, the average price of LASIK eye surgery is similar regardless of the city or state, unless there’s a special discount on. If look hard enough, you’ll probably be expecting to pay $1550 per eye and wavefront LASIK for $1950 per eye (prices are quoted in Australian currency) at the Australian Institute of Eye Surgery in North Sydney. You’ll also need to be referred by a GP or optometrist for the consultation, which has a $220 fee attached to it.

If you don’t look hard enough and just accept any old Australian eye surgery, then looking to get standard LASIK eye surgery done for $2000 per eye!  And I’ve seen “standard” LASIK prices go up to as high as $2600 and eye surgery prices go as high as $7500! (Told you everything here is expensive.)

Most LASIK centres here also offer some kind of financing option, like CareCredit and Ezi-Express. The CareCredit plan offers up to 12 months interest free financing and a revolving line of credit can be used for enhancement treatments. For extended payment plans, like for 24 month, 36 month and 48 month plans, these will have some kind of interest charge but you’ll only pay a small amount of money a day, like $5 a day. The Ezi-Express option allows you to pay 50% upfront and then the rest of the 50% has no interest for 12 months.

Currently, the personalEYES centres in NSW are offering a $1000 discount for any all-laser LASIK correction surgery for those who book an eye surgery before the 28th of February this year. As you would know, there are often many hidden costs involved with cheap eye surgery and there probably is in this case, since you would have to book for a free eligibility consultation before qualifying for this. Nevertheless, it’s still a good deal.

There is also the Australian version of the Groupon site (http://groupon.com.au) that is offering a 50% discount of wavefront LASIK eye surgery for only $785 for 1 eye at the Australian Instituate of Eye Surgery. This is probably the only genuinely cheap eye surgery you can get in Australia that I could find.

The last way of reducing you costs of eye surgery is to have Medicare rebates cover part of the eye surgery cost. In case you don’t know, Medicare is our universal health system that offers free hospital treatment, free or subsidised treatment by practitioners and free treatments for those who bulk bill. This obviously to cover Australians and not tourists. To get Medicare, you need to have an Australian or New Zealand citizenship, or have a permanent visa, or have applied for a permanent visa.

So what does Medicare actually cover? It covers 20% of net medical expenses over $1500. For example, if your laser eye surgery costed $4000 overall, then Medicare covers only $2500 of that surgery and you would get $500 back in your tax return, assuming that you’ve made the claim. If you have a private health insurance as well (this is getting a bit far, but let’s just say that you do), then you can only claim Medicare after you’ve claimed your private health insurance claims.

So that is how you get cheap eye surgery in Australia, which essentially involves looking for discounts and using the health care system to your advantage. The Australian Institute of Eye Surgery is probably the best place to go, and you can combine it with discounts on Groupon or some other coupon site, and you can get the price dramatically reduced.