O-A extension, why need insurance?

[Sheryl]

23 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

 ....the next step would be for the Immigration Bureau to publish full details and make it official. …"

And therein will lie the problem.  Even those of us with ample insurance worry about this as they tend to create documentation requirements that are hard or impossible to meet.

[Andrew Dwyer]

17 minutes ago, easydoor said:

Mister Koeler,

The answer is very easy:

for Non O-A: you must give the financial proof in your HOME country, This means: nothing says you have money in Thailand. In case you get sick and need a stay in a hospital.... where wille be the warranty you will be able to pay?

In case a Non O: there is a warranty you have money in Thailand, 800k on a Thai account or enough income each month, also on a Thai account.  In case you cannot or you don't pay a hospital bill, they easy can confiscate your Thai account, something they cannot do or will be much more difficult to do  in another country.

So easy is the answer, and it has nothing to see with discrimination.

The OP’s question covers this:

When on an OA visa it is true that no financial requirements are required in Thailand for the period of up to 2 years.

But the question remains why is mandatory insurance required for an extension of permission to stay on an OA visa when the financial requirements are required as per an O visa or extension of ??

 

Plus , who is Mister Koeler ??

[tonray]

23 minutes ago, easydoor said:

Mister Koeler,

The answer is very easy:

for Non O-A: you must give the financial proof in your HOME country, This means: nothing says you have money in Thailand. In case you get sick and need a stay in a hospital.... where wille be the warranty you will be able to pay?

In case a Non O: there is a warranty you have money in Thailand, 800k on a Thai account or enough income each month, also on a Thai account.  In case you cannot or you don't pay a hospital bill, they easy can confiscate your Thai account, something they cannot do or will be much more difficult to do  in another country.

So easy is the answer, and it has nothing to see with discrimination.

Extension after visa expires requires same money in Thailand plus insurance 

[chilly07]

23 hours ago, ThailandRyan said:

If you believe what you have written, well then I wish you the best of luck fighting the good fight.  Eventually as things have been said it will be possibly rolled up to all classes of Visas as far as the extension of stays go.  It is already necessary to have a 50K USD policy as well as covering Covid to enter the country.  Talking with many others they believe this is here to stay no matter what class of Visa you have.  Even the Non O needs to have the 50K insurance to enter Thailand, once that Visa is up to be extended it does not require the insurance, as of yet. 

Won't be rolled up to all extensions. O visas require proof of income whereas OA doesn't hence insurance. Please don't suggest to Immigration that insurance be required for O extensions. OAs are for frequent fliers who pose a much higher Covid risk whereas O extensions are for those intending to reside permanently in Thailand

[jollyhangmon]

2 hours ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

The OP’s question covers this:

When on an OA visa it is true that no financial requirements are required in Thailand for the period of up to 2 years.

But the question remains why is mandatory insurance required for an extension of permission to stay on an OA visa when the financial requirements are required as per an O visa or extension of ??

 

Plus , who is Mister Koeler ??

 

... true, but probably as simple as: the law (amendment, police order ... whatever it's called) states NON-OA, so they apply it to anything to do with OA ... 

 

Does it make sense? Nope, but don't get me started ... I just had to bring a 12month statement to a FIXED acct, mate >vigorous facepalming< ... 

 

[khunPer]

On 12/4/2021 at 5:50 AM, Chiller said:

With the insurance requirement for O-A extensions set to dramatically increase later next year what are the thoughts of launching a legal challenge against this nonsensical discrimination?!’

The extension of stay seems to be linked to the entry visa, and the O-A gave you the option of keeping your funds in your home country, instead of a deposit in a Thai bank, or proof of monthly income transferred into Thailand.

 

To my understanding, the O-A visa is a solution in a specific number of countries for retirees that wish to spend a up to a year in Thailand. My friends using it are so-called snow birds coming for just less than 6 month - keeping their minimum 180-days benefits in their home country, and not being tax-residents in Thailand - and applying for a new O-A visa the following year.

 

Solution: Use a non-immigrant type O visa instead, and extend your stay based on retirement on that visa, like most of us expat-retirees do...????

[ThailandRyan]

3 hours ago, chilly07 said:

Won't be rolled up to all extensions. O visas require proof of income whereas OA doesn't hence insurance. Please don't suggest to Immigration that insurance be required for O extensions. OAs are for frequent fliers who pose a much higher Covid risk whereas O extensions are for those intending to reside permanently in Thailand

I think your a tad confused. OA extensions require income as well. Either the 800k in the bank or proof of 65k a month.

[pookiki]

Just to clarify a couple of issues. Is medical insurance from a Thai insurance company that is needed for a 'extension of stay' for an original O-A visa also required when a person applies for an O-A visa in their home country?  The issue of exiting Thailand on an O or an O-A, which has been extended get confusing as well. Under the Thai Pass, it would appear that even a person on an O visa who leaves Thailand and returns during the period of time the visa is valid, would be required to have insurance of at least US$50,000 when returning - but for how long? For those on O-A (or extensions), it would appear that they would also need to show insurance for the 'new' three million baht policy that is being required.  One last note, the O visa is big profit maker for agents and brokers who process O visas or extension 'under the table'. There will always be ways to navigate 'around' the system for a price.

[natway09]

I still believe that sooner than later insurance will be required for all retirement visas.

There are just too many of us old geezers here that are just not in a position to pay 

the hospital bill if something goes terribly wrong

[lamyai3]

I think there's two reasons the non O-A was singled out for mandatory insurance back in 2019, irrespective of the muddled official reasoning as to why non O-A applications and extensions need insurance while the virtually identical non O extensions (affecting a much larger group of people) don't.

 

Firstly, the government had been cracking down for some years already on the easiest and sometimes most abused visa options for several years, rendering earlier long stay routes such as repeat tourist and education visas no longer possible. Probably the best choice if over 50 was the excellent non O-A visa, which required money to be shown in an overseas bank only, and if properly used allowed up to 24 months stay, after which you could just rinse and repeat. In comparison with the other visa options available this was no doubt seen as unduly favourable, and increasing the cost of it by adding insurance was one way of taking the shine off this visa class and reducing the number of people choosing to use it. Since the Non O-A allowed someone to stay here long term without depositing a single baht it was an obvious target for compulsory insurance, as it didn't really require much in the way of proof of funds or income. 

 

Second, the insurance lobbyists in the government and the private sector both would surely like to see these requirements applied to all long stayers, but this wouldn't be so easy to achieve. In this sense non O-A holders serve as a relatively small test group for the new insurance, and whether it gets imposed on non O's at some point in the future is anyone's guess. It brings to mind the scrapping of embassy income letters for four countries, also in 2019. At the time we were told that the new rules would affect all countries but it soon became clear it was a targetted crackdown that was dropped as soon as it achieved the initial goal of stopping these countries using the income letters and have them switch to monthly transfer or bank deposit instead.

 

In this case the underlying plan might be nothing more than to disincentivize people from applying for non O-A's and instead to switch them across to non O's and extensions. 

Edited December 5, 2021 by lamyai3

[roobaa01]

Gday

Catch 22 not mentioned that also retirement applicants for a non-o Single entry or mutiple visa categories currently need to provide an insurance of 400k ipd/40 k opd . That was prior the case for NON-OA applicants.

 

Wbr

Roobaa01

Edited December 6, 2021 by roobaa01

[david555]

On 12/5/2021 at 11:43 AM, Sheryl said:

And therein will lie the problem.  Even those of us with ample insurance worry about this as they tend to create documentation requirements that are hard or impossible to meet.

"....requirements that are hard or impossible to meet."

 

Also because those (foreign) insurance company's make also their own rules who sometimes only differ in words with what Thailand wants to read ....

 

"when go to Rome do as the Romans ...."is a wel known phrase i would say...????

Edited December 6, 2021 by david555

[ubonjoe]

13 minutes ago, roobaa01 said:

Catch 22 not mentioned that also retirement applicants for a non-o Single entry or mutiple visa categories currently need to provide an insurance of 400k ipd/40 k opd .

The started last year when they started allowing entries for retirement last year. It is only needed when applying for a non-o visa at a embassy or consulate. The insurance only has to be valid for 90 days to do the application.l