Mandatory travel and health insurance for tourists?
The Ministry of Health is considering requiring foreign tourists to purchase travel and health insurance before traveling to Thailand. The measure is intended to ease the financial burden on hospitals. In a number of cases, they cannot recover the costs of medical treatment for foreigners from them.
According to Minister Pradith Sinthawanarong (Public Health), 2,5 million foreigners visit a Thai hospital every year. Of these, expats make up 40 percent, tourists 20 percent, 8 percent are tourists who come for general medical care, and the rest are emergencies. The latter group in particular costs the hospitals money.
The minister first wants to encourage tourists and retired foreigners to take out insurance, but in the long term he is thinking of making it mandatory, possibly including a levy on their plane ticket or hotel tax.
The president of the Association of Thai Travel Agents says tourists who come through a travel agency usually have travel insurance. He thinks that the government should allow hospitals to recover the costs through the embassy instead of requiring tourists to take out insurance.
The article does not mention how much all hospitals lose, but does mention two examples. The Varicha Phuket hospital added 3 million baht last year and the Banglamung hospital in Pattaya 2 million. In Phuket, medical care was concerned with accidents, emergency treatment, operations and the care of deceased foreigners whose bodies were left in hospital.
(Source: bangkok mail, March 13, 2013)
PS Just to be clear. This post is about the Thai Ministry of Health and has nothing to do with the Embassy.
About this blogger
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Known as Khun Peter (62), lives alternately in Apeldoorn and Pattaya. In a relationship with Kanchana for 14 years. Not yet retired, have my own company, something with insurance. Crazy about animals, especially dogs and music.
Enough hobbies, but unfortunately little time: writing for Thailandblog, fitness, health and nutrition, shooting sports, chatting with friends and some other oddities.
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If the embassy will also tell me what the point of travel insurance is? If I read the rules I can only claim a stolen camera and if I am admitted to hospital my health insurance will pay for it Regards
Perhaps it could be a good idea for the Thai government to make basic insurance for foreigners possible and compulsory, just like in the Netherlands.
I think that many questions will be resolved and, moreover, the Thai government will also become wiser.
It is unclear to me why I have to pay for health insurance in Thailand. Am I different from the Thais and other people who use the 30 baht scheme? I adapt and am among the population I chose when I emigrated. Why do Dutch people like to be stripped bald so much?
You could also put it the other way around, Henk: why should those Dutch people – who are in better material conditions than the average Thai – should be able to benefit from a facility that is clearly not intended for them?
This item is not intended here, I understand. Why would you take out separate insurance in a country with state insurance? This is all done to look for quality in hospitals. A kind of supplementary class policy, while with class 1, 2 or 3 the treatment by the doctor is the same. People try to cover uncertainty, but the disease and old age come anyway when it is so determined. In addition, insurers limit acceptance by age, terminate the insurance at a certain age (contract that can be canceled on both sides) and/or charge unreasonably high premiums. I will not pursue this subject further here. But it remains a hot item.
@henk,
I have been married to a Thai woman for several years and the XNUMX Baht scheme only gives them access to the lowest quality of free medical care.
If we travel to Thailand every year, we always take out extra travel insurance on top of our basic Belgian health insurance, which also does not cover everything and which entails a small additional cost, and this also gives the option to be treated in expensive private clinics with doctors trained abroad instead of veterinarians as my wife describes them in a small clinic in nakhon nowhere in Isaan.
If you are satisfied with the feeling of security that the 30 Baht card gives you, good for you, but hopefully you will never have anything bad in terms of health, because in terms of special treatments, etc., those vet clinics are not provided and they will still send you to special expensive clinics for treatment that can be very expensive.
I think the amounts that the mentioned hospitals incur are still not too bad, respectively 50.000 and 75.000 euros on an annual basis. You can never prevent it completely, even in NL hospitals suffer damage due to the uninsured, despite all the rules regarding health insurance – and those amounts are 'slightly' higher. An obligation to be insured when visiting a country is not unfeasible and is not new either. Estonia, for example, had such an obligation in the XNUMXs: upon entering the country, you had to present proof of insurance at passport control.
Not really new.
My Thai colleague also had to submit a medical insurance during her trip with her visa application to NL (for a visit to a fair) before she received a visa at the NL embassy.
And what I wished to guarantee, they didn't give a damn.
She also had to present a return ticket. A ticket to Dubai (because following a fair there' and a statement from a Dutch travel agency in Bangkok that she had to buy the Dubai / Amsterdam / Dubai ticket THERE), didn't help one bit. She had to submit a return ticket to Bangkok/Amsterdam/Bangkok. That her plane would make a stopover in Dubai… the lights on the Embassy were of no interest.
So.. from Dubai first back to Bangkok.
By the way.. same embassy and NL Foreign Service (IND) despite everything.. was put on her MVV: nationality Taiwanese.. how difficult can everything be.
The fact that you need medical travel insurance for a Schengen visa has been the case for years. Furthermore, only Russia and Cuba have this obligation for tourists, so that Thailand wants to introduce this is indeed new(s).
So who knows, maybe I and all those other millions of tourists will have to show a copy of my (travel) insurance to the immigration officer when I enter Thailand. Then they can add "some" extra gates on Suvarnabhumi. And how can that civil servant read all those different languages? Or does the proof of insurance have to be translated and legalized in advance at a Thai embassy? I think the Thai Ministry of Health still has a lot to think about.
I think the devil is in the conclusion of the minister's statement. He is thinking of a levy on plane tickets or (increase) of the hotel tax. So a tax measure. However, it seems difficult to distinguish between foreigners and Thais.
Our health insurance also covers the costs abroad. First pay yourself and then declare. Will be deducted from the personal contribution. My wife never goes to the municipal hospital, although her card allows her to. She prefers to be helped well.
Does this mean that people who are permanently resident here on a retirement visa now have to take out compulsory health insurance in Thailand? Uninsurable with existing ailments.
Never understood that they do not collect the premium for care through the relevant benefit agency, then all the premium comes in (as before).
And everyone who has a BSN number is also insured abroad, even with a long stay extra premium.
Today it is asking for trouble, people do not pay their premium and still become
helped, even if you come back from abroad without health insurance, you will be helped
and later ask who paid for it.