While this is in part due to the generally lower incomes of people in this contributor age group, many also had access to government health concession cards. This left about 80,000 contributor units where the contributor was aged 65 years or more with neither private health insurance nor government health concession cards. Type of private health insurance coverage also varies with age. Persons in contributor units where the contributor was aged 35-64 years were four times more likely to have ancillary only insurance than those contributor units where the contributor was aged 65 years or more. Part of the reason for this may be that for the aged some ancillary services are available at no, or low, cost through public hospitals and community health centres.
Some States also have low cost dental and eye care schemes for the aged.
When age and income are combined as factors involved in private health insurance cover, a more complicated pattern is revealed, although, in general terms, private health insurance coverage increases with age and income. Private health insurance coverage increased for each age and income group except the oldest, middle income contributor units whose level of coverage was lower than that of middle aged, middle income units. For all contributor unit types level of insurance coverage increases with income. The higher level of private health insurance coverage for contributor units containing couples reflects their generally higher incomes. Couples with dependent children were more likely than other types of contributor units to have hospital and ancillary cover while couples without dependent children had the highest rate of hospital only cover.