Health Insurance: Not Just for the Sick or the Scared
At 63, I’m fully insured—and I sleep better for it.
That’s despite being a regular at the gym, walking most days, and generally taking better care of myself now than I did in my 40s.
But I’m also old enough to know that health isn’t just about how clean your diet is or how many steps you clock on your Fitbit.
The thing is, health insurance isn’t one-size-fits-all. We all have different genetic baggage. Some of us are walking around with family histories like ticking time bombs—heart disease, cancers, strokes—while others come from lines of good fortune or luck, who lived to 100 on a diet of whisky and sarcasm. It’s a total lottery.
Yes, the young and invincible often scoff at insurance. We've all heard the classic: “They never pay out anyway!”
But dig a little deeper, and it’s usually down to something like non-disclosure of pre-existing conditions. Insurers won’t shout that bit from the rooftops, but it’s there in the small print.
And while Aunty Madge might’ve made it to 103 on 60 smokes a day and a diet of condensed milk and biscuits, that doesn’t mean the rest of us will.
Life throws curveballs. A freak accident, a dodgy scan, a slipped disc from lifting your suitcase wrong—and suddenly you're five-star private hospital material with a six-figure bill.
I have narrowly missed death twice, once on a broken JetSki in Pattaya, and I tried to swim to shore. I misjudged just how far it was; I was rescued by a German man on a sailboat. I have never been so happy to see another human being.
The other occasion was when an eighteen-wheeler took a corner at speed in Siem Reap and missed me by millimetres, my hair stood on end, and I shook for about 10 minutes—unforeseeable incidents.
Health insurance doesn’t guarantee anything, but it does buy peace of mind. And in this part of the world, that’s not a bad trade-off.