This country just doesn't know when to shut up and let their own industries thrive. Or, they are trying to make some money for some friends of theirs in the insurance industry of Thailand which, given what I know about corruption in this country, is more likely the case.
It hasn't passed yet and I hope that someone still has a brain in the higher levels of government, but the proposal is that every single person that is traveling to Thailand would be REQUIRED to have accident insurance in order to be allowed in the country.
It's almost like the want tourism numbers to continue declining.
We don't know a great deal about this yet, but there are multiple methods that Thailand is considering as far as enforcement of this is concerned and both of them are wildly beyond the scope of the technology that the actual immigration officers have available to them.
1> They are talking about having it directly tied to the purchase of a flight. IE: They think they can prevent you from buying a ticket through the thousands of agents and websites that sell these tickets, unless you also purchase insurance: Good luck!
2> They are talking about requiring "proof of insurance" when applying for a visa either online or in person at a consulate. Ok, so people who don't have access to a printer will have to actually get insurance
I recall when in the past that Thailand had other hair-brained ideas such as "requiring proof of onward travel" and that lasted for about 5 months or so. The thing is, there are a litany of websites where you can print out fake flight itineraries such as at this website where it is FREE.
Agencies all around the Thai border had services for this sort of thing where an agency would give you a printout that looks exactly like a flight itinerary but it isn't real.
You see, there is no way that the various airlines, or insurance companies for that matter, would just allow some government agency to freely check their databases of customers and what level of insurance they have. There are privacy laws all around the world and an insurance company doesn't give a damn about any threats from a developing country's immigration department. They would just flat out refuse to verify anything that they had if they even tried to do it.
So just like with the onward travel proof, the proof of insurance is just one more thing that is going to unnecessarily inconvenience travelers and perhaps encourage them to just go somewhere else, as millions of travelers are already doing.
Thailand was doing the best as far as tourism was concerned when the government just got their greedy little hands out of the way and let the industry run its normal course of supply and demand. Every time the Thai government has passed down this rule or that, it has negatively affected travel patterns to the Kingdom and none of the programs that I am aware of even ended up sticking around for very long because they were eventually discovered to be as pointless and unenforceable as this one will be.
The fact that they are even discussing this simply shows the extreme disconnect that the high ranking Thailand government officials have with the very industry that they are meant to be helping out with. I'm quite certain that there will be Thai "partner insurance companies" that will happy to "help you find an insurance plan that works for you" for a fee of course.
The justification for this proposed change to Immigration law is that the government purports that $3 million worth of medical bills were unpaid in the past year. Well the travel industry lost more than $1 billion in revenue in the same time period. Perhaps you are focusing on the wrong numbers Somchai?
Vacations / Holidays are suppose to be a time to relax and Thailand used to be a wonderful place to do that. But just like I always say "If it isn't broken, Thailand will "fix it" until it is broken."