Getting Health Insurance in Thailand

[chrisfwilson]

I have lived in Thailand now for 18 months and commenced looking for Health Insurance. Luckily my wife use to work for AIA and so she was a great help trying to get the best cover for me (just turned 58).

After about 2 months she was so pissed off with the various Insurance agents she talked with that she rang AIA and got her old job back. She updated her skills and went to some product courses and is now a fully fledged agent.

As a result I now have a pretty good policy, and it wasn't that hard to be honest.

I now know that the insurance game here is very very different than what I had in Australia.

My policy (about 36000 baht per year) is in three parts but could have been 4 (see point 2)

1. Hospital cover (Private) includes 125 days in Hospital up to room cost of 3400 B, but capped at 36,000 each stay. For an operation its 80,000 cap per visit, which includes all medicines etc

2. If under 55 the policy can pay 2500 B per day in hospital (its like salary protection)

3. A Life insurance cover (mine is 20 years) that is like a bank account/death cover that after 20 years yields 200,000 B

4. If I have an accident I can claim up to 1.4 Million (if dead) or 600,000 B maximum but its a sliding scale depending on how hurt you are.

What I have now seen is that you go to hospital for any type of injury and then claim it on insurance. My wife banged her leg, when to hospital where the doctor said stay off it for a week and so she claimed it on insurance (she wasn't really seriously hurt) and will get about 20,000 from the insurance policy she has.

[saintbangkok]

I still have BUPA, not sure if it is better or worse than AIA, so many people have so many opinions. It seems to be a typical "Insurance" product that will maybe pay out if i get sick etc, if under certain circumstances, at certain times, places etc and at that stage they may only pay like half the bill. Better than nothing, but always read the serious small print, as my advisor matey did for me at Lifestyle Insurance. Boring as hell this guy was as he made me read with him and listen to each detailed section, it was like being back in school detention, but he was serious about his job shall we say. It was in HK, i bought Life Insurance from him also. Can you imagine how long that took!

[JoePai]

I looked at AIA but found out it is a Life Insurance company. Was told you have to buy Life cover (quite useless after 20 years as the amounts are so small) which increases the cost. I found better health coverage from other medical insurance companies

[harrry]

The health insurance atached to life insurance is because legally the companies cannot provide stand alone health insurance.

I would think if they insure your life it may be in your interest as no insurance company wants to pay out on this so almost cetainly will try to keep you healthy.

[saintbangkok]

I looked at AIA but found out it is a Life Insurance company. Was told you have to buy Life cover (quite useless after 20 years as the amounts are so small) which increases the cost. I found better health coverage from other medical insurance companies

Not sure you were being told the truth there matey. I had AIA three years back and was not told to buy life insurance, so maybe you were dealing with one of those sell sell sell agent types???

[AAInsuranceBrokers]

As Harry has suggested Life Insurance companies (as AIA is) cannot offer just Medical Insurance as they have the wrong license. The way they get around this law is to bundle the medical with Life insurance.

[saintbangkok]

As Harry has suggested Life Insurance companies (as AIA is) cannot offer just Medical Insurance as they have the wrong license. The way they get around this law is to bundle the medical with Life insurance.

So not a legal issue as much as wrong licence issue then. Why don't they just get the right licence like any credible firm?

[harrry]

As Harry has suggested Life Insurance companies (as AIA is) cannot offer just Medical Insurance as they have the wrong license. The way they get around this law is to bundle the medical with Life insurance.

So not a legal issue as much as wrong licence issue then. Why don't they just get the right licence like any credible firm?

Posibly because then they could not offer car or house or life insurance.