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Dubai set to revamp health insurance

“With the global financial crisis, we took another look at the health funding model for Dubai and came up with alternative solutions,” said Dr Haidar Al Yousaf, Director of Health Funding at the Dubai Health Authority, 
on Monday. “We have three options including an insurance-based solution, a variation of health insurance model and a health funding model,” he said without giving further details.

The earlier planned health funding scheme that was largely employer-funded was deferred in 2008 by 
the authority. Dr Al Yousaf said that 600,000 policies already existed in the emirate while the target was to cover 1.7 million people in three years.

While Dubai has offered alternatives to its earlier proposed funding model and has come up with variables of health insurances to suit the current financial crisis, the UAE Ministry of Health is also readying the Federal health insurance plans for all residents, discussed officials at the Health Insurers Forum in Dubai.

Expected to be approved by the Cabinet early next year, the Federal health body will provide health cover to residents in emirates that do not have independent health bodies, they said at a roundtable discussion during the HIMSS Middle East 2010 conference.

The newly set up Federal health body is also planning to set up a medical board that will encourage health insurance cover for all residents, said Fareed Lutfi, Secretary-General of Emirates Insurance Association, Dubai Holdings, while giving an overview of the Middle East health insurance industry trends.

“While the global insurance market shrunk following the crisis, the market in the GCC grew at a rapid pace of six per cent in the non-life insurance and nine per cent in the life insurance in 2009,” said Lutfi who is the Group Director of Insurance at Dubai Holdings. “It is expected to grow further.” The total written premium for non-life insurance activity in the UAE was Dh16,766,347 in 2009. Looking at the insurance industry, the UAE is leading the market in the GCC and the Arab world with a major percentage holding the total premium income, he added.

“The GCC countries have long adopted “a cradle-to-grave” approach to welfare and have lessened their nationals’ belief in the necessity of insurance,” said Lutfi adding, “Not anymore.”

“Because studies show that healthcare costs in the GCC are expected to reach $55billion (Dh200.75 billion) in 2020 due to rapid population growth, reluctance of population to be responsible for their own health and wellbeing, prevalence of affluent lifestyle diseases and increasing per capita healthcare spending,” he said.

According to Lutfi, now is the time for healthcare reform, to achieve universal coverage, affordability, quality improvement and market reform. “There is definitely the appetite for healthcare reform in the US, so why should our region be any different in addressing this challenge now,” he asked.

asma@khaleejtimes.com

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