Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing whether or not Insurance associated with Thai Immigration is an utter scam. For those who have been watching, especially this channel, we have been keeping up with this for some time going back into October 2019 and before when insurance came on the scene as being associated with Immigration specifically Retirement Visas notably at that time. Then COVID came along and it basically became ubiquitous. Everybody had to start dealing with insurance on some level or another; there are exceptions, Thai nationals, people that are in the Social Security System here in Thailand just as a couple of examples. That said, the vast majority non-Immigrant Visa holders, the majority folks that are tourists to Thailand are still dealing with this insurance situation. 

The reason for the video is I was reading a recent article in the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Future insurance requirements for foreigners entering Thailand still muddled. I urge those who are watching this video to go and check out that article. There is a lot more information in here. I am going to quote a small except here. Quoting directly: "As Thailand opens up again to international visitors of all kinds, it has a golden opportunity to sort out its insurance requirements and introduce some coherence across the board." I would make an argument that not only would it be a good idea maybe that be done but I think a lot of this insurance could probably be thrown out. I even questioned a lot of the recently announced, well it is not so recent but it has yet to come in to effect, it is supposed to come into effect in the fourth quarter of this year, a substantial increase in insurance coverage we have talked about at length on this channel, but $100,000 worth of coverage or the same amount of money on hand in an account to prove self-insurance. I really question whether that is absolutely necessary and if it doesn't perhaps maybe drive away a certain element of foreign national that we would like to have in Thailand as retirees. But again, maybe reasonable people can disagree on that. I am not going to go too deep into that. 

Long story short, yeah I think it is probably a good idea to maybe reassess going in here this summer and hopefully this thing being considered endemic and us getting rid of Thailand Pass, maybe we sort of reassess insurance policy at the same time. Quoting further: "The quality of policies available both in Thailand and abroad varies from excellent to utter scam. The worst are designed only to be a thinly-disguised entry tax on which any subsequent claim is impossible because of the small print wording. One can only hope." I am not going to get into detail. I don't particularly think anybody is trying to scam anybody with respect to these insurance policies. One thing with respect to especially in the beginning of dealing with Immigration back like in the early, in the middle part and going into the summer of 2020 was just everything was just so up in the air and when retirees were first allowed to come back in I remember because we were working very diligently quite frankly especially the Immigration team here in our office to assist folks in getting back in as quickly as they could. A lot of folks were just basically buying whatever coverage would get them into the country and sort of deal with the rest of it later and I suspect that under some circumstances people probably made decisions they wouldn't have otherwise made with respect to the insurance they bought. Does that necessarily mean that that insurance was bad or anything? I don't think so, it was just what they felt they had to do at the time. So it is interesting. I definitely think maybe a reassessment of insurance policies with respect to Immigration here in Thailand wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.