News Forum - Still unclear if visitors to Thailand will need medical insurance in the future

[TSS]

8 hours ago, Thaidup said:

remember when we had to pay 500 baht to leave?

  still in effect- built into the ticket price. As will the new 300b or whatever it is. Says for tourists only but my TW & son pay as well

[Saltire]

19 hours ago, Ramanathan.P said:

They are looking at their crystal ball to find alternative ways to extract wool from the tourists eyes. They will still find a way to milk whatever way they can as long as tourists wanted to enter the country. The only way is to totally scarp all these scams which are causing pains and burden to the tourists.

Agree, I often think they leave these decisions to the last minute to give them more time to come up with a new requirement to milk visitors before the current insurance cash cow is removed.

Having said that I am pretty sure the current Thai pass etc will need to go soon. As soon as airports get back to anywhere nearing normal arrival numbers, all these current restrictions will do is cause queues like never before. Before Covid on a busy day at Suvarnabhummi I have waited 2 hours from landing to get through, and that was just immigration and baggage.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Saltire

[Cabra]

6 hours ago, Skip said:

Maybe a better point of view is to require that the insurance companies stop scamming and provide decent coverage that pays properly when it is needed... to allow tourists to travel to any country without health insurance is ridiculous... put the burden of your illness on the insurance companies not the tax paying citizens. 

I think that the government narrative that foreigners with COVID have (or will) somehow created a burden on the Thai health care system is widely exaggerated. The government mishandling of the COVID cases (everyone is equally "sick" and require unnecessary hospital admission) is the real culprit of any healthcare burden.

[HolyCowCm]

I don't really care if it is 500 or 1000 or 1500 baht added to the plane ticket, but just get on with it and don't make any of us or the tourists have to hassle with getting the insurance. For us long timers just add it to the renewal of stay price and incorporate it also have standard health insurance. Say 5k - 10k a year for all of us to have everything covered. They will make a bundle off of us.

[Grumpish]

12 hours ago, Thaidup said:

remember when we had to pay 500 baht to leave?

Yes, I can remember having to go and pay the departure tax - after check in, before you went through security and immigration. Paid directly by the airlines now, as part of the ticket price.

[BusinessTravel]

I don't know what the confusion is but nobody's going to come when there's  rules that interfere with people's lives. People are over the covid game Open the door and quit seeing how far you can push it

[Kent]

I think yes , foreign visitors will still need medical insurance for future visits to any country around the globe , assuming that the virus still exists.

(1) if a person is infected with the virus , one will need immediate medical treatment and such treatment can be costly especially when treatment is done at private hospitals, therefore the insurance will come in handy to cover the costs.

(2) you can't expect the host nation to cover the costs of treatment for foreigners at their tax payers expense.

 

[Zorba_the_Geek]

Trust me, if you get the right program, and ditch nonsense such as medevac add on. It really pays off. When things go bad in SEA they go bad bigly.

So less than $2 a day once saved me $16,000 and I had seven doctors (the magnificent seven) ICU and a five star room at Medical City Angeles in 2017.

It's worth it!

[palooka]

On 4/16/2022 at 7:48 PM, Guevara said:

My Insurance underwriters couldn't make it any easier or simplistic to understand but I doubt when I arrive in Thailand it will be accepted. It's no more than a disgraceful and shameful scam.

Todays meeting (22nd) did not make it quite irrelevant but a BIG positive step in the right direction on many aspects for travellers.

Think the Insurance of $10,000 will stay but should be negligible in cost to the traveller and hopefully they'll incorporate it into ticketing prices with their 300 baht they are currently adding already to the previous 500 -700 baht they have already put into ticketing over the years.  At least then the tourist doesn't  have to do individual Insurance. So a positive to a negative.