Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Thai Retirement Visa, specifically the insurance requirement associated with the Thai Retirement Visa. I thought of making this video after receiving some recent correspondence from a viewer who was just kind of throwing out some thoughts about stuff we have talked about on this channel.

I am going to quote directly from this correspondence, quote: "I was also wondering how come the Health Ministry introduced the compulsory health insurance for O-A Visa holders. According to the Immigration Act, the Health Ministry is not represented on the Board of the Immigration Commission so would appear to be acting outside of their departmental responsibilities." This person also sent in some really good insights regarding 90-day reporting in the context of the so called Long-Term Residence Visa, LTR Visas; again as we discussed not really a Residence Visa option but let's leave that aside for now. Under that analysis, that was pretty good analysis regarding 90-day reporting, under this one I don't think this person is understanding quite what's going on. Yeah that is true, the Commission that deals with Immigration Policy, Public Health Ministry doesn't operate directly on that body but it can advise. These Commissions can ask for advice from other Ministries and that is my understanding what happened. I believe we go back to 2017 when this stuff first started coming down and then when they first started discussing it and then in I believe is October 2019, when it became mandatory to have insurance associated with the O-A Visa. 

So it's my understanding that sort of the Ministry of Public Health issued kind of an advisory opinion to which the Immigration apparatus said "okay we understand your advice and we are going to go ahead and incorporate that in relevant regulations regarding the O-A Visa" and that's what has happened. I have seen the regulatory breakdown. We have seen it, it was published by Thai Immigration, I did videos on that years back. So yeah unfortunately the insurance requirement to the best of my knowledge and I have talked about it with some of the Attorneys here in the firm, the best of our thinking, yeah that looks pretty spot on. Immigration has the right to change the regulatory structure to have requirements that they deem necessary for things like public health and safety, National Security, they can issue Ministerial Regulations for that and they can seek advice from other Ministries. So it is my understanding Public Health Ministry advised Immigration as to what their thoughts were on the overall issue, then Immigration went ahead and took them up on those thoughts.