She had a VCA, they were stranded in Thailand and two months later they can return – 25/02/2019

"How I feel I'm exultant!" Carlos Alberto Mariscotti has contacted Clarin from a sanatorium in the city of Chiang Mei, 900 km from Bangkok, to announce that he and his wife, Mercedes Ema Albinatti, will finally be able to return to Argentina 45 days stranded in Thailand. According to Mariscotti, "everything was due to the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embbady of Argentina in Bangkok".

But when the retired couple of the district of Nuñez take the plane to return to the country, on March 11, they will have already accomplished their mission. more than two months since the beginning of the trip, this has delayed them In this Asian country: they were on vacation and on January 4, Albinatti had a stroke while they were having breakfast in a hotel.

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The woman was immediately operated on in the private sanatorium of Chiangmai Ram and began her rehabilitation. However, when the surgeon told them that they could continue this therapy in Argentina, they realized that backtracking would not be an easy task: they did not even have the $ 20,000 they needed to pay for their plane tickets with medical badistance (condition of the surgeon to unload the woman), nor with the money to pay the debt generated by the clinic itself, that billed expenses far exceeded the $ 60,000 covered by Albinatti's travel insurance.

In fact, the debt has reached the $ 70,000 above (approximately $ 2,000 per hospital day).

After various media broadcast the request for help from Mariscotti and his claim of some "ninguneo", as he described on behalf of the Argentine authorities, finally help is long overdue.

"This weekend, the Chief of Ambbadadors (Luis María Sobrón, Director General of Consular Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) communicated with me and told me that they were very worried and that it was very bad. they had strict orders in Bangkok for the authorities to go to Chiang Mai meet the director of the sanatorium to unblock the situation ".

And the situation was unblocked. From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs they explained to Clarin Patricio Kingsland, chief of the consular section of the Argentine Embbady in Bangkok, was responsible for these efforts.

Achievements? The deadline (scheduled for this Monday) in which the couple was to be transferred to a Thai public hospital was postponed, the sanatorium not wishing that they continue to accumulate debt that they could not pay more later. At the hospital, they agreed with the embbady that Albinatti could continue his re-education until his return to Buenos Aires.

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In addition, airline tickets were arranged for March 11, with an advance of half the price; the rest is a debt that the couple must repay gradually. And they will be indebted for the $ 70,000 they owe to the sanatorium, although a special discount could be negotiated these days, according to Mariscotti.

The story seems to unfold and it is possible to think about the case: the couple had a travel insurance contract, but the cover was not enough to cover health incident that is unthinkable but not impossible. Do you make a self-criticism?

Mariscotti told the media what he had thought about during these 45 tedious days in an Asian hospital: "When we organized the trip, the insurance we contracted was an additional procedure: We thought about hiring it and we did it but we never thought about reading the fine print. If I had read it, I might have done everything differently. "

"Before traveling, we met with friends and they asked me if we had taken out travel insurance." I joked that I had hired two 30-day insurance for $ 150,000 each. And I said "until a transplant can be done for this money". And we all laugh, "said Mariscotti.

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"But when we did the procedures here, I was informed that my wife's insurance was $ 60,000 because she's over 70 years old.. I mean, I'm 70, but she's 73 years old. We did not read the fine print, "he admitted.

And he concluded: "We did not give the travel insurance the importance it had.You can not travel without insurance, and less at our age.Now, the main thing is to leave and we leave already. "

LGP