simpsonc510

I don't have the link right now, but today I read an article that the Thai government is considering adding a health care policy requirement for visitors to their country. They are discussing adding the cost of it to the price of the visitor visa. I'll try to pull up the article, but it's on drudgereport today.

crosscheck

Here it is:

http://www.drudgereportarchives.net/...php?ID=422410&

Kathie

Visas, of course, are only required for stays longer than a month, so I wonder if this is targeting people who stay for months at a time - making sure they have medical coverage. When you find the link, I'll be interested to read the article.

Kathie

crosscheck, I couldn't get your link to work. Apparently the Drudge report is not Mac-compatable. So here is another link:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-Ne...2601372457061/

It's very odd, as it isn't about requiring people to have medical insurance, but to purchase it from ?some Thai company. And there is mention of travel insurance, obviously not teh same thing. I'll be interested to see what comes of this.

simpsonc510

Kathie, I'll be curious to see what comes of this as well. I thought it was an interesting idea, and it would help offset costs of treating foreigners at state run hospitals (which I do not believe includes Bamrungrad or Bangkok General and Bangkok Heart Hospital).

Hanuman

Here's another link: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/loca...-to-be-insured

Make sense to me as other countries require this as well. Biggest arrivals into Thailand is from other Asian countries follow by Europe and then American. For American alone, 3 dies everyday in Thailand from various causes, sad but interesting statistic which point to the need of requiring visitors to have health insurance.

Carol - you are right Bumrungrad, Samitivej etc are private hospitals.

rhkkmk

why not require it from freeloaders who go to a place only to receive free benefits..

usa could learn a lesson

oh, now i'm in trouble again

Kathie

What seems odd to me is not that they want visitors to be insured, but that they want them to buy insurance via the visa process or at the airport. Many of us have both medical insurance and medical evacuation insurance and don't need more insurance.

Hanuman

Kathie the idea is still very new and from the Bangkok Post first paragraph <i>"Various state agencies have agreed in principle with the Public Health Ministry’s proposal to require foreign tourists to buy travel and health insurance before arriving in Thailand." </i> Note the "before arriving" part.

With over 22 million visitors each year it make sense. Over 14 million are from Asia, around 5.5 million from Europe and 1 million from the USA. The European and American tourists normally have some kind of health insurance like yourself but the 14 million from Asia don't normally have them.

Hanuman

Oops the numbers for visitors are a bit wrong here's the proper stat for 2012:

OVERVIEW: Visitors from East Asia totalled 12,502,194 (+20.84%), Europe 5,617,817 (+10.12%), the Americas 1,080,148 (+13.40%), South Asia 1,289,641 (+11.36%), Oceania 1,046,753 (+12.13%), Middle East 604,659 (+0.58%) and Africa 161,853 (+17.36%).

crosscheck

Kathie, Strange - I do use a Mac.

Hanuman, three deaths a day...Yikes!

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Sounds like this could be a big boon to insurance companies. We found medical fees to be extraordinarily cheap in Thailand. The hotel doc and nurse at the Peninsula charged us only $5 total for several visits, which included meds. And a friend broke her arm (severely) in Siem Reap and was airlifted to a BKK hospital where she had surgery and then remained in the hospital in relative luxury with a private nurse for 4-5 days (probably would have been an outpatient procedure at home). She could well afford to pay for her treatment and also had traveler's insurance, but was only charged a tiny fraction of what she would have spent here.

This sort of cheap/free medical care is also available in many other countries. Even with insurance, American rarely encounter the kinds of fees we have here.