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Pre-Existing Conditions and Thai Retirement Visa Insurance

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Thai Retirement Visas and specifically Insurance in the context of Thai Retirement Visas. 

As most viewers of this video may be aware, Thailand has created a Mandatory Insurance scheme for those who wish to remain in Thailand in retiree status. As a result of that I have been getting a lot of correspondence, a lot of people have asked "What about if I have pre-existing conditions?"

Well a viewer, and we thank this viewer for bringing this to my attention, sent me some documentation from the Ministry of Public Health and specifically this is an Executive Summary. The Compulsory Health Insurance for Aliens to Apply for Non-immigrant Visa type O-A, period not exceeding one year.  International Health Division, Department of Health Service support on October 9th, 2019 and under Section 7 of this Executive Summary, there is this heading:  The Essence of the Purposes for Amending Regulation, and this is where the "rubber meets the road" with respect to policy thinking on this kind of stuff. There is Section 3 under Regulations Offer to Amend  Quoting directly: "In case of applicants who have a high health risk so cannot purchase the insurance but allowed to apply the Visa, the Immigration Bureau should set the additional conditions e.g. the provision of the larger amount of deposit.” Then it states Reason: “The foreign elderly have the adequate amount of money for medical fee and others."

So while up to now I have not seen anything in writing which specifically elucidates how the Immigration Officers will look at dealing with folks who for example just cannot  get insurance coverage due to pre-existing conditions, we now see that there is a policy issue that has come up and I think as a result of this we may see some movement on this at some point in the future but clearly they have taken this on board and I think under the regulatory structure as it sits, it leaves the Immigration Officers with the discretion to say "Hey, go ahead and show us more money in a Thai bank account and we will allow that to offset for a lack of insurance but we need to be able to see that you can support yourself here in the Kingdom of Thailand if you have pre-existing conditions and if you have medical issues that result in costs to you or to Thailand. We want to see that you can go ahead and support yourself if the worst should happen".