Brits increasingly tapping GoFundMe rather than medical insurance
Liam Gibson faces a 100,000 pounds hospital bill in Thailand.
An increasing number of Brits in Thailand face medical bills they cannot pay. So their distraught families are focusing on the biggest crowdfunding platform GoFundMe. The profit-making fund raiser has just celebrated its 15th birthday and has, in total, raised over US$40 billion from 150 million donors worldwide for a variety of worthy causes. But a third of all the cases involve raising cash for ongoing hospital treatment or, occasionally, for hygienic disposal of the deceased.
As British tourist and expat numbers to Thailand have fallen over the past 20 years – from 800,000 annually to maybe 500,000 though detailed statistics are not available – GoFundMe paradoxically has become more popular. This probably reflects the fact that the company has become better-known internationally and has captured around 90 percent of the British crowdfunding market for hospitalizations. A review of Google, with the help of artificial intelligence, indicates that there was a total of 9 British appeals for help with medical bills in 2018 and at least 36 in 2024.
Most cases in 2025 have involved either swimming/water-related accidents – including the life-changing accident of the British army’s Liam Gibson, 23, who tragically slipped at a Koh Samui waterfall – or traffic accidents mostly involving motorbikes. Intensive care units in Thailand’s private hospitals now have technological facilities to equal any in Europe, but the costs can be prohibitive: particularly in the first two or three days when tests and diagnoses are abundant. Many total bills come to 100,000 pounds (well over four million baht) and much more if a private jet is needed for the return to UK.
Paramedics attend to a British victim of a motorbike crash in Pattaya.
Nobody knows how many British in Thailand carry comprehensive medical insurance. It is not required for tourists or for most expat visas. During the Covid pandemic, there was a temporary requirement for insurance against that specific disease, but it was withdrawn in mid-2022. Thailand’s foreign affairs ministry says only that insurance is the visitor’s responsibility, a policy unlikely to change as Thailand seeks to maximize tourist numbers as cheaply as possible, particularly from “newer” countries such as India and China.
Apart from failure to insure, there is the added problem of some policies not actually paying out. Policies are likely to exclude claims if a pre-existing illness has not been declared (even if unrelated) or a crash helmet was not worn or the motorbike in question was larger than 50cc. A broker for Policy Bazaar said the total of properly insured visitors to Thailand was only about one third.
Much misunderstanding has arisen because of misleading press and social media reports that Thailand guarantees medical treatment in Thailand for the first month of stay. In reality, earlier schemes were mostly discretionary payouts to relatives following the death of a foreign tourist, for example after a multi-vehicle motorway crash. Thai authorities have long promised to introduce an entry tax of 300 baht (7 UK pounds), a small part of which would be devoted to medical cover. But the scheme has not yet been introduced and its detail is entirely speculative.
According to the World Health Organization, foreign tourists are not subject to compulsory insurance in any popular Asian destinations (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines) and there are no common standards for expats. It looks as if GoFundMe will have a very successful 2025 with average payments to medically-compromised Brits already averaging around 25,000 pounds, or well over one million baht. But even that level of crowdfunding won’t prevent many British families from expensively bailing out a stricken relative in the unlucky 1 percent of travellers who can’t leave Thailand on time.
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