All UK expats in Thailand urged to get private health insurance

The British Embassy in Thailand is urging all UK expats living in the Southeast Asian country to make certain they have private health insurance.

Resident expats are being told to make certain they have private health insurance, and tourists are being urged to get full-cover travel insurance before they arrive in Thailand. The warning was issued due to an increase in the numbers of uninsured UK citizens the embassy was forced to help after accidents or medical problems necessitated a stay in a pricey Thai private hospital. According to the embassy, around a million British tourists arrive in Thailand every year, with some 55,000 expatriates scattered around popular destinations such as Hua Hin, Chiang Mai, Pattaya and Phuket.

The majority of long-stayers are working, but around 10,000 are retirees on various pensions including the less than generous UK state pension. It seems most of those who ended up seeking help from embassy staff had neither travel insurance nor private heath insurance. Further figures comprised last year state 50 per cent of tourists who received consular assistance weren’t insured, and 80 per cent of Britons in Thailand over 51 years of age, also had no medical insurance. It seems many UK expats in Thailand still believe they are entitled to NHS treatment should they return to the UK after falling ill or being injured, expecting to be admitted to hospital for free treatment. Sadly, they now find they are treated as private patients and may be turned away from an NHS hospital after basic emergency treatment.

In 2016, one UK state pensioner expat who’d been advised by a Thai doctor to go back to the UK immediately as the expertise needed to treat him wasn’t available in his regon arrived at a major UK hospital with a gangrenous foot and lower leg, only to be told that he would have to pay or go away. Fortunately, he’d first checked the NHS website and found that, under information on the relevant page, he was still entitled to free treatment under the NHS. After a long argument, the hospital admitted he was entitled to be treated as an NHS patient, but distressing comments continued to be made by hospital staff throughout his stay. After three major operations, he was sent back to Thailand minus one leg, and died several months later from deadly infections contracted whilst he was in the NHS hospital. Even if he’d had private medical insurance in Thailand, there would, according to the Thai doctor, have been no-one able to help him at Thai private hospitals in his locality.