Heart Disease: Top Hit with High Medical Expenses
Heart disease is one of the No. 1 causes of death worldwide, including Thailand. Importantly, heart disease could happen to people in all ages, and it is divided into several groups of diseases as they are caused by abnormalities of the heart and blood vessels, such as coronary artery disease, heart muscle disease, cardiac arrhythmias, valve heart disease, congenital heart disease and infectious heart diseases. Each disease requires different treatments. However, the common thing is that the medical expenses and other expenses of the heart disease are extremely high! How high is it? Let's see.
57 Thai people in average die from heart disease per day.
The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020 found that cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 cause of death worldwide, with approximately 17.9 million deaths from this disease, considered extremely high. Heart disease is also one of the top causes of Thai people’s death.
Statistics from the Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health (16 September 2018), showed that there were 432,943 Thais suffering from cardiovascular disease, with the death rate of 21,000 people per year or the average of 57 people per day, which means everyone has a chance of heart disease if we are not careful or have risk behavior.
In addition, the Department of Medicine stated that, in 2014, Thailand had an average medical expenses for heart disease patients of 6,906 million Baht per year. Heart disease is considered as one of the diseases with relatively high medical expenses. If we have no plan, those expenses may affect our life considerably.
Resource: Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health
80% of patients with coronary artery disease is caused by high-fat diet and smoking.
- Before talking about expenses, let's look at the causes of the disease. What are the risk factors of the heart disease that requires a ton of money on treatments? More than 80% of patients has coronary artery disease, and the factors causing the heart disease are divided to 2 factors as follows:
- Uncontrollable factors: genetics, age, gender
- Controllable factor is our daily life. The most risk behaviors were smoking, eating high-fat foods, not exercising and a result of other diseases, such as blood pressure, abnormal fats in the blood, diabetes, abdominal obesity, not exercising, not eating fruits and vegetables and accumulated stress.
The patients with heart disease often get tired easily when doing activities. They also have chest pain like pressure, difficulty speaking, distorted mouth, palpitations, shortness of breath, sudden weakness, numbness of limbs, left chest pain radiating to left arm, including swollen legs and feet due to heart attack.
Source: Paolo Hospital
The heart disease treatments cost from 10,000 to more than a million.
No matter how old you are, heart disease can happen to you. Let’s take good care of yourself because diseases always require high medical expenses for treatments, room fee and medical equipment. Those expenses may worsen the symptoms after seeing the bill as the heart disease is one of the diseases requiring high medical expenses. The Central Chest Institute of Thailand set approximate medical expenses as follows.
- Balloon Angioplasty 76,000 – 139,000 Baht
- Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting 124,000 - 503,000 Baht
- Pacemaker implantation 18,000 – 436,000 Baht
- Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG) + Heart Valve Surgery 160,000 – 630,000 Baht
- Aortic Aneurysm Surgery 110,000 – 768,000 Baht
Remark: These are only the estimated treatment expenses subject to change.
If you don’t want to lose a ton of money, always take care of both your mental and physical health. Always exercise, stop smoking, reduce high-fat foods, be less stressful and be happier. These can reduce the risk of heart disease, but don't forget to look for a critical illness insurance plan with low premiums covering 36 critical illnesses at any stage. If a critical illness is detected, receive lump sum benefit of up to 1 million Baht(1), whether for cancer, heart disease or Alzheimer's. The insurance premium is less than 7 Baht per day(2). Critical illness is unpredictable, so the critical illness insurance plan is the answer for you to pay those expenses in lump sum benefit to not affect your savings, allowing you to live a happier life.
(1) In case of purchasing CI Perfect Care Rider, the sum insured is 1,000,000 Baht.
(2) For the female insured, aged 28 years, who chooses to purchase CI Perfect Care Rider with the sum assured of 1,000,000 Baht in annual premium payment
- Coverage period of the rider must not exceed the coverage period of the life insurance policy that this rider is attached to.
- CI Perfect Care Rider must be purchased to be attached to the policy which is still effective.
- Premium is eligible for tax deduction. Conditions are as specified by the Revenue Department.
- Underwriting is subject to the Company’s rules.
- Please study the details of coverage, conditions and exclusions before deciding to purchase insurance.
Resource: Retrieved on 08/09/2021
🔖 Paolo Hospital (Information as of 22/01/2019)
🔖 Central Chest Institute of Thailand
🔖 Department of Disease Control, Ministry of Public Health (Information as of 02/09/2020)
🔖 Raksa (Information as of 19/08/2019)
🔖 Thai Health Promotion Foundation (Information as of 28/09/2020)
🔖 Posttoday (Information as of 11/09/2019)