New Born Insurance

[2Na]

First, let me ask the mods not to transfer this to the insurance forum, as I believe it is a family matter.

I am looking to insure my kids, can you - mothers and fathers, please let me know what insurance you provide your babies with?

Also, what kind of coverage is it?

I my self am looking for something that has OPD coverage in it.

[g00dgirl]

We still self insure. I have been doing that for the last 10+ years and continue to do this for my child.

The reason is not so much financial but ideological.

This fits our lifestyle since I avoid doctors, medication and hospital visits as much as possible, prefer natural treatments that insurance would not cover and prevention with good nutrition and exercise.

Insurance companies support a drug selling industry that is not helping people to be healthier in most cases.

If there was an insurance that covers only ipd and opd related to accidents like physical injury, broken bones, broken teeth, wounds, ligaments, muscles, trauma but excludes all "civilazation illnesses" then I might support it.

[gregb]

Until your children reach age 6 insurance is extremely expensive. When our twins were born, I checked several plans, ran the numbers, and decided none of them were worth it. We simply paid cash with the backstop of the free state universal health care system if something really bad came up.

So far we are averaging about 700 baht per month per child in outpatient services, and around 1100 baht per month per child in hospital stays. We haven't had any serious issues that we didn't feel like paying out of pocket for, but if we did, we'd simply go to the government hospital where they are registered with the gold card. This system allows you the efficiency of letting the private hospital make the diagnosis, but the state hospital provide the care if it is too expensive.

Insurance of all kinds is just not a good deal in Thailand. Paying cash and using the gold card seems to give us everything we need at a reasonable price.

[dave111223]

I got a family plan from TV insurance because insuring kids by themselves seems very expensive (especially through the Thai insurance companies).

We only got in-patient coverage (ie just to cover for emergencies/operations etc..) as OPD gets a lot more expensive.

Since we have another baby on the way we'll have 4 people on the plan and adding extra kids to it is very cheap, so it gets a better deal the more kids you add (once you hit 2 kids the rest of the kids don't cost anything more).

I've yet to make a claim so i don't know how good they are in that department.

[samran]

William Russel out of the UK for me and my family. More than one child receives a discount. Family of 4, parents in late 30's with 2 kids under 5, total premium was around 12,000/baht per month for inpatient only (no excess payment).

We found that in Thailand at least OPD wasn't value for money, being relatively cheap to pay up front when all you were doing is getting checked for a cold or something.

In any case, if anything did go wrong under our plan which required hospitalisation, outpaitent follow up was covered for a year. Same with any tests etc which were required in the lead up to hopitalisation.

In terms of newborns (as per your heading) if you have one on its way, their maternity insurance for the mother automatically covers the new born for 28 days following birth. Handy if (god forbid) you have any complications post birth.

Not the cheapest about, but honest to god good insurers, and they've looked after us and paid out some very substantial claims in out case.

Edited July 26, 2011 by samran

[PattayaParent]

Local BUPA insurance cover.