70 Or Older? Health Insurance For Seniors

[Johnny Pequin]

I am a 74 year old man living in Thailand on a retirement visa and am self insured. My visa expires in January. I have heart failure and was treated for a heart attack at the Korat government hospital 6 years ago and paid for the treatment myself. I want to leave the country June 19 and return in about 4 months. My question is will they let me re-enter the country without being insured. I would like to have a plan that retricks me to the Thai hospital with a 100 or 200,000 deductable just so I have some paperwork in case they deny me re-entry without insurance. Is that possible. I do not want private hospital insurance. Will they let me return in November or December.

[Peter Denis]

29 minutes ago, Johnny Pequin said:

I am a 74 year old man living in Thailand on a retirement visa and am self insured. My visa expires in January. I have heart failure and was treated for a heart attack at the Korat government hospital 6 years ago and paid for the treatment myself. I want to leave the country June 19 and return in about 4 months. My question is will they let me re-enter the country without being insured. I would like to have a plan that retricks me to the Thai hospital with a 100 or 200,000 deductable just so I have some paperwork in case they deny me re-entry without insurance. Is that possible. I do not want private hospital insurance. Will they let me return in November or December.

Some additional info is needed to provide you with correct advice.

- Are you staying here on a Non Imm O-A retirement Visa or on a Non Imm O - retirement Visa?

- What is the validity date of that Visa (as printed on the Visa sticker)?

- What is the current permission to stay date as stamped into your passport when you last entered Thailand or applied for the 1-year extension at your local IO?

- Do you have a Re-Entry Permit, and if so is it SingleEntry or MultipleEntry?

 

[Rdrokit]

If you are on an O-A then you will need insurance to reenter the country from what I have read. I think the only company that will issue a new policy to anyone over the age of 65 is Pacific Cross and they cut off at 75. If I were you I would contact an insurance broker and see if they could even get you a policy. I have been using AA Insurance Brokers since 2007 for all my insurance needs. They are in Pattaya and speak English. Last time I talked to Benny. Drop him and email, you have nothing to loose. Good luck.

 

AA Insure - Benny Wijnings <[email protected]>

[Peter Denis]

2 hours ago, Rdrokit said:

If you are on an O-A then you will need insurance to reenter the country from what I have read. I think the only company that will issue a new policy to anyone over the age of 65 is Pacific Cross and they cut off at 75. If I were you I would contact an insurance broker and see if they could even get you a policy. I have been using AA Insurance Brokers since 2007 for all my insurance needs. They are in Pattaya and speak English. Last time I talked to Benny. Drop him and email, you have nothing to loose. Good luck.

 

AA Insure - Benny Wijnings <[email protected]>

The posts on this thread are very useful and correct in the sense that their starting point are your actual health-insurance needs, so that in case of catastrophic accident/illness you are well-covered.

This should not be confused with the mandatory health-insurance that is required by IO when applying for the 1-year O-A retirement extension.

 

Indeed, since October 2019 a thai IO-approved health-insurance policy issued by one of the TGIA associated insurers is mandatory when applying for the 1-year extension based on your original Non Imm O-A Visa for reason of retirement.

If you are in that case, you need to subscribe to one of those thai IO-approved health-insurance policies.  But since the majority of those policies are exorbitantly expensive for the ridiculous low coverage they provide, it is recommended to subscribe to the dead cheapest one, which is the LMG Insurance Plan 1 (with 200K deductible) that sells at an annual premium of 6.000 THB to 11.400 THB in the age bracket of 51 to 75 years).

An additional advantage is that that policy does not require an (expensive) medical.  You just need to fill in the comprehensive application form to subscribe to the policy and you will get the Health-Insurance Certificate that IO requires a couple of days later in your mail.  Obviously you should refrain from ticking any serious pre-existing conditions on the application questionnaire, as that might lead to LMG rejecting your application.  Since you only subscribe to the policy as an 'entry ticket' to meet the IO health-insurance requirement for your O-A retirement extension application, and probably will not make any claims under that policy, doing so should not be considered as fraud.

 

As mentioned higher, subscribing to this somewhat affordable but further worthless policy is NO substitute for real health-insurance that will cover your actual health-insurance needs.  And of course, if one of the other thai IO-approved health-insurance policies DOES meet your actual HI-needs at a reasonable cost that would obviously be your policy of choice.

 

Note: An alternative to avoid the mandatory thai IO-approved health-insurance requirement for an O-A retirement extension is to convert to a 90-day Non Imm O retirement Visa and subsequent 1-year extension.  The requirements/conditions when applying for such a Non Imm O retirement extension are exactly the same as for a Non Imm O-A retirement-extension, but with the one difference that the Non Imm O does NOT require any mandatory health-insurance.

However, a conversion to a Non Imm O Visa requires a border-run (in order to 'kill' the present permission to stay of your Non Imm O-A Visa), which is not possible at the moment.