Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing O-A Retirement Visas. I got to thinking of making this video, I made another one contemporaneously with this one regarding O Retirement Visas; to be clear, we are talking about O-A Retirement Visas in this video. 

I got to thinking of making this video when reading a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Future of compulsory medical insurance for visitors to Thailand still cloudy. Quoting directly: "Although Government websites speak currently of the need to obtain cover for the whole of the proposed stay, it is enough for the Thailand Pass pre-registration bureaucracy and the vital QR code to have just one month of anti-COVID cover. Indeed, the Thai General Insurance Association website will register you only for 30 days, merely stating you can renew once here if needs be. But extensions of stay in most cases do not require evidence of ongoing Medical cover. So very few people bother."  

A sort of caveat on that, or just to add a little nuance, and there is a lot of good information in that article, I urge those watching this video to go check out Pattaya Mail. But O-A Retirement Visas as we have discussed in a number of other videos currently do require insurance coverage and beginning with the fourth quarter of this year, 2022, they are going to require insurance coverage of $100,000 US dollars in coverage not only in order to get the O-A but to maintain status in Thailand via extensions, via O-A extensions here in the country. This may be a substantial requirement for many folks; it may put certain folks in kind of a predicament with respect to maintaining their O-A Visa status for the long term.

Now there may be options, most notably it may be possible to get a change of status over to O Retirement Visa status which does not require, at least of the time of this video does not require ongoing insurance coverage. That stated, something to bear in mind if you are looking at the O-A, insurance is a requirement not only to get the visa but to maintain status via extensions and that requirement is going up substantially in the fourth quarter of 2022.