C3PO

Interesting bike. For those who bought it: Is the CL500 worth the extra 80k tbh compared to the CL300? Especially given the road conditions and traffic in Thailand.

Hello everyone, According to several warnings here the cost of potential child birth complications could run into the millions. My wife is Thai, so she is covered by universal healthcare. However, the hospital where she is registered does not have an NICU, so we checked Sriphat, which seems to be a popular option for childbirth in Chiang Mai. Paying for the birth is not the problem, but I would like to minimize the financial risks of potential complications. Two questions: 1. If there were complications in a hospital that is not her registered hospital (for example Sriphat), would that be covered by the UHC as it’s an emergency? 2. Would the baby be covered by the UHC, for example for a stay in an NICU? The baby will be a Thai national, so technically, it should be covered from day one. But if it's in not my wife's registered hospital, I am not sure how that works in this case. I will ask at the hospital as well but I am not sure how much I can rely on the answers from their front desk. We could also ask them to refer us to another public hospital, then I believe everything should be covered. It would be great to hear your thoughts. May thanks, and have a great day.

Thanks, @Celsius, I didn't know about the life insurance requirement. Another option would be to include Thai nationals under an expat policy. However, with many of these policies, their cover would end if the expat policyholder dies, meaning they would then be back to using universal healthcare. But that would still better than paying for a policy that doesn't deliver when it matters.

I would be curious to hear what your experiences were with the universal health care scheme in terms of the quality of healthcare. Would you rather pay for private health insurance for a Thai national, or use the universal healthcare scheme and then pay out of pocket for room upgrades and diagnostic tests, etc. to speed up processes? From what other people have commented on this forum, many Thai private insurance policies come with serious red flags.

My understanding of this policy wording: You will only be refunded reasonable and customary costs (which is a standard clause for almost every insurance policy) and they provide you a list of hospitals that they believe charge reasonable costs. That doesn't mean you cannot use other hospitals or will automatically be charged 20% deductible, as long as the costs these hospitals charge are classifed by April as being reasonable. - just my understanding, best to clarify with the insurance directly.

This is an old thread, but maybe still useful information. I learned that with some international insurances (April for example) you can take your Thai partner on your insurance plan, even if you both live in Thailand and she/he is a Thai national. It works only if the expat is the main policyholder. The downside is if the expat gets off the policy, the Thai partner won't be able to keep the insurance.

Has anyone used the AXA SmartCare plan? That's a rather new plan and insures only in Thailand as opposed to the AXA SwitchCare which insures in Asia. Premiums are considerably lower and coverage looks ok. What I don't understand is that they set limits "per illness". What does that mean? Is that per illness/ per year or is that over a lifetime? Big difference, but the Terms & Conditions don't clearly explain that.