@John *******

For me the cost is about same as my previous US insurance. Your cost is going to depend on your age, the amount of coverage, the deductible, and possibly your health status. You need to ask the insurance company or broker directly for your personal circumstances.

I also have Pacific Cross. My strategy for health insurance in Thailand is to have a large deductible (in my case, 40,000฿). I pay for routine care myself and the insurance is there for something really serious. This keeps the year price down, I’m now getting a 20% no claims discount.

My Pacific Cross policy qualified for my previous OA visa extensions and now for my pensioner LTR.

@Leon ***

my understanding is that the Elite visa staff assist you with this type of of stuff.

Personally I think the Elite visa makes the most sense if you are under 50 years old. I know a guy that retired at 44 and got a 5 year Elite visa which he converted it to a 20 year before the price change.

Now you can get the 20 by invitation. I don’t know what invitation means.

@Brook *******

He asked about visas that didn’t require frequent extensions. I know several people with 20 year Elite visas. I have a pensioner LTR.

If you are somewhat wealthy then there is the Elite visa which you can get for 5, 10, or 15 years or the LTR visa which is 10 years. Otherwise you have to get an O visa which you extend yearly. Also, with an O visa you will have to do 90 day reports.

Pay attention to the requirements for the visa and the later requirements for subsequent 1 year extensions. They are not the same.

When I got a new US passport last year it took 1 month. Plan on whatever processing time the US embassy says it is.

The OA requires health insurance. The O does not require health insurance. You probably have an O visa.

There are a lot of recent stories about problems opening bank accounts even for expats with long term visas.

I opened a Bangkok Bank account last October in Sisaket province. The bank person had never seen an LTR visa and called a supervisor over. They weren’t difficult about it. In fact they were quite friendly and I had my new account in about 45 minutes.

There are only about 4,000 LTR visa holders and they aren’t often opening bank accounts. I think the current heightened scrutiny about foreigners opening bank accounts is causing confusion among bank employees fearful of being connected to allowing an account to be opened that ends up being used for illegal purposes.

This was in October, 2022. It took them a couple of months to get to my application. Once they started looking at it then it took a couple of weeks to get the approval. I scheduled an appointment at the BOI office in Bangkok. They finished a few more documents and then walked me over to the immigration office across the hall. There Immigration cancelled my OA visa and entered the ink stamps for my LTR. I paid the 50,000 baht that day in the Immigration office.