Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the notion that COVID-19 insurance is now going to be a requirement for all Expats in Thailand. I have gotten a lot of emails from people that have been asking me this today and it has basically broken within the last 24 hours of the making of this video. The issue being "Do all Expats in Thailand need to get COVID insurance?" 

Let me go ahead and preface this by saying let me start with Permanent Residents this does not appear to apply to even on its face. We are going to drill even further into this because I think that the media has, well 1) This isn't promulgated yet. We haven't actually seen this enacted; we haven't seen any regulations on this yet. I think that reporters, journalists, media generally that are reporting on this thus far, are conflating a lot of different things here. Let's go ahead and read this from print edition Bangkok Post, this is Wednesday June 16th, 2021. The article is titled: Virus Cover Needed for Long Stays. Quoting directly: "All foreigners living in Thailand as non-immigrants will in the future have to prove they have insurance coverage of at least US $100,000 (3 million Baht) against COVID-19." Okay, so let's start off there. When I said this doesn't apply to Permanent Residents so just to begin with "all foreigners living in Thailand as Non-Immigrants", well Permanent Residents as we have discussed at length on this channel are Immigrants. They have Permanent Residence status; they are not non-immigrant visa holders so they are out. Quoting further: "The proposal was approved in principle", let's really drive this home, "in principle" we have not seen this fully fleshed out yet, "by the Cabinet yesterday and Traisuree Taisaranakul Deputy Spokeswoman for the Government said it would apply to all holders of one year non-immigrant visa." No I have seen the spokespeople say things and then we have later seen things not be precisely what they were saying. So it is going to be interesting to see the way that this plays. "NIVs are awarded in four categories: marriage, work, business and retirement," so right there I can tell you that is not true. There are Non-immigrant visas for Media; there are Non-immigrant visas for education; the Elite Visa program operates on a Non-immigrant O category. There are other categories besides just these four so again let's take a breath Expat community because we have yet to see this fully promulgated and I think that sweeping statements are being made and a lot of detail is being left out. So quoting further and this is where my ears if you will pricked up and I started wanting to analyze this a lot deeper. Quoting further from the same article: "At present, holders of the NIV must be insured to the tune of just 40,000 Baht for outpatient treatment, or 400,000 Baht for inpatient treatment at a hospital." I would say anybody that says” at present holders of the NIV must be insured to the tune of just 40,000 or 400,000”; it is not just. You are probably going to want to take that "just" out of there. A lot of our clients that have to deal with this know that there are costs associated with that mandatory coverage. It is not "just" a small amount. That said, they are stating this as if everyone that holds a Non-Immigrant Visa has to have that coverage. That is not true. That is not the case at all. We are talking about O-A retirees that have to have that coverage, even O Marriage Visas as we have discussed at length O retirees don't necessarily need that. Certainly Business Visa holders as well as Work Permit holders. BOI is another category that is NIV. Technically it is a Business Visa but again it falls under its own category under the actual Act and it is considered a Non-immigrant Visa as well. So again just this Bangkok Post article and this is front page. I understood, I got a lot of correspondence just today. Kind of snap. People were asking me about this; everybody is worried about this. Yes, it is cause for concern that they are talking about it. It is also cause for concern when a Spokesperson says this is what is covered but then you see this other information that clearly is only talking about retirees. 

Compounded on that because I went out and did a little further research, I went over to the Nation, nationthailand.com, the article is titled: New Rules to Support COVID Health Insurance for Long Stay Expats. Quoting directly: "The old rules require purchasing Thai Health insurance through the website, longstaytgia.org which has suffered operating problems. The new rules offer a lifeline for Expats over the age of 70 who cannot purchase insurance in Thailand and thus face having their applications for extension of stay rejected." Well as we have discussed at length on this channel, there are multiple ways to deal with Retirement status in the longer term. Further, the original byline, quoting directly is: "The Cabinet on Tuesday approved in principle, new rules to support health insurance for long stay foreigners under the Non-immigrant O-A Visa." Now that is what the Nation is saying. They are not saying all NIV. They are just talking about the O-A. So Bangkok Post is making this sound like this is about all Non-immigrant Visa holders and they go out and specifically cite "Marriage, Work, Business and Retirement." Nation Thailand is saying no this is about retirees. So I don't know what is going on here. Maybe the resolutions that are being discussed are still in a nebulous format; still a little bit vague. Again, quoting further from this Nation article: "Applications for extension of stay can use Health Insurance from abroad or Government welfare from abroad. This must be certified by relevant Government agency such as a foreign Embassy in Thailand or the country's Foreign Ministry." Again, this does not seem to apply to things like Marriage Visa holders here in Thailand especially Business Visa holders here in Thailand. I will get to my further conclusions here in a minute. Let me just finish. Quoting again from the Nation, nationthailand.com. "The Cabinet assigned the Immigration Bureau to improve rules and conditions governing applications for short term visas while the Foreign Ministry has been tasked with upgrading guidelines for the O-A Visa applications." Now again that creates a little bit of gray area in my analysis of this because I can't tell who is talking about what. However, in the totality of this I would tell folks who are watching this video, just take a deep breath, sit tight; this is going to take a while to flesh this out. Any of these rules that do ultimately come about it is probably going to be a while before they are actually implemented because it takes some time for them to be published and everything to be promulgated and a finer point to be put on it.

What I take away from these two articles and I haven't seen much more that covered a great deal more detail than this thus far, we will certainly update this channel obviously as the situation evolves. What I take away from these two is I think there is a lot of confusion going on because frankly journalists are journalists. They take down the news, they get it out there, that is their job. They don't necessarily know the finer points of Thai Immigration or Visa law and all of this stuff. It looks to me like this seems to be aimed primarily at retirees. It does not seem to be aimed at these other categories notwithstanding the fact that they were specifically mentioned. Now, I could be wrong on that and when we ultimately see this come about we could see a more broad interpretation. We could see this more broadly applied with respect to other categories. If I was to make my own inferences about how I think this will play out, I would say yes I think probably retirees are going to need regardless of their status in Thailand are very likely, I say likely because we don't know, very likely to have to have COVID Insurance even if they are here in Thailand for extension purposes. Meanwhile it wouldn't shock me to see Marriage Visas being required to have that same thing. I suspect Business Visas probably will not and the thinking on that has always been, my opinion 1) most of those folks are going to be covered by Social Security and those who are working in Thailand generally have their own insurance; they have some sort of coverage, some sort of way of covering themselves. So I doubt that Business is going to be that high a priority. It looks to me like from reading everything I have seen thus far on this does seem to be aimed definitely at retirees so I could definitely see where this could apply broadly to basically anybody in a Retirement category; that is O, that is O-A. Let's be clear, this does not appear to change the current distinction between O and O-A with respect to the 40,000 coverage versus 400,000 coverage, the insurance, the medical coverage. As we have noted in other videos, O Retirement Visas those extending retiree status in O status as opposed to O-A, do not necessarily need to maintain their medical insurance, the medical insurance that has been required since October of 2019. However I think probably Marriage Visas are probably on the bubble right now with respect to making a determination on that. I would personally be very surprised to see the Business Visa categories being roped into this because I don't see the policy reason behind including those but all of this remains to be seen. 

So, the thing to take away from this video: First, it hasn't been enacted yet so don't freak out just yet. Secondly, it does not apply to Permanent Residence. Everything I am reading thus far is saying it only applies to Non-Immigrant Visas. Finally, it does appear at least from my research of this so far that the main thrust of this is aimed at Retirement Visas and it is possible that the reporters, as this is so nebulous here in the beginning, may be conflating Retirement Visa status with all Non-immigrant visa categories. Now that being said, all of this remains to be seen. My opinion is retirees look most likely to be impacted by this and it will probably happen in the course of the next year. Marriage Visas probably somewhere in between, that may or may not end up being roped into this and then I would say Business Visa holders will probably least likely to be directly impacted by this regulation. Now again, all of this remains to be seen so we will definitely keep you updated on this channel as the situation progresses.