Age Pension and Seniors Health Card
(CSHC) Changes
New measures to deem account-based pensions for the purposes of eligibility for the age pension and CSHC scheme. Individuals who are existing age pension and CSHC holders and receive income from an existing superannuation income stream before 1 January 2015 will have their rights grandfathered, or protected.
However, if you purchase a new account based pension on or after 1 January 2015 that income stream will be subject to deeming.
Therefore, you should seek financial advice before you decide to change pension products after 1 January 2015, to determine the effect this may have on your entitlement to the age pension and/or CSHC.
Other news for current CSHC holders:
Income thresholds are to be indexed in line with CPI from September 2014 (yet to be legislated).
• You can spend 19 weeks overseas without losing your entitlement to the card, from 1 January 2015. You also retain grandfathering provisions if this applies (yet to be legislated).
• The seniors supplement will be stopped, with the last payment being in September 2014 (yet to be legislated).
• The Energy Supplement will continue.
Current and new CSHC holders will continue to remain eligible for concessional benefits for medicine on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), free prescriptions once they reach the PBS Safety Net, bulk-billed GP appointments (at discretion of your doctor) and a reduction in the cost of out of hospital expenses via the reduced threshold applicable to the Extended Medicare Safety Net.
