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Thai Retirement Visa Insurance: Will Anyone Be "Grandfathered" In?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Thai Retirement Visa specifically the insurance that is now mandatory and associated with that Visa category. This Retirement Visa Insurance scheme has been promulgated within the last few days from the timing of this video or the making of this video.  

I wanted to go ahead and talk about an issue that came up and was discussed on this channel with respect to Retirement Visas when the financial criteria came up which was the issue of "grandfathering" and whether or not there will be people who will be "grandfathered" in with respect to insurance. Now there has been certain concern amongst people who are of a certain age, ages that are considered "high risk" with respect to issuance of insurance and I wanted to be clear on, that topic is in another video specifically; the high-risk insured if you will.

This video is more on the topic of the statutory scheme associated with this; how this is going to play out. I have yet to see the written rules on this yet. Hopefully we'll see them soon but it is interesting. I don't know what the answer to this question is just yet, exactly. Whether or not they are going to go ahead and "grandfather" people in and keep them or not require certain people to go ahead and get Retirement Visa Insurance. What people am I talking about? Well there are other videos on this channel. You can go to the search function and just type in "grandfathered in" in our search box on our channel and you will find a video specifically on that topic and basically there are individuals who came to Thailand and got into Retirement Visa status before a certain year, a couple of years, and there are also certain age groups that did not need to meet the higher financial criteria associated with those who came into the Kingdom later and obtained Retirement Visas.  Whether or not those individuals who meet those criteria and have maintained their status under that "grandfathered-in" situation will now be required to get insurance or not remains to be seen. I can see policy arguments going both ways on that. I can see it's logically consistent to say "look, they are required to be operating under the terms with which they initially got their visa. We "grandfathered" them in once; we will probably do it again.” I could also see them going a totally different way and saying "the policy reason behind the financial requirements didn't have anything to do with health insurance", and going ahead and requiring those who are in retiree status to go ahead and get insurance.

It all remains to be seen. I will do another video on this channel as soon as that particular issue is sort of more flushed-out but for now I think it is an interesting point to ponder. I suspect that Officials here in the Kingdom are probably having this discussion as we make this video with respect to exactly how to treat those who have been in the Kingdom and "grandfathered-in" under prior provisions.