The Abu Dhabi Department of Health revealed to "Emirates Today" that it had developed a customizable health insurance plan that offers the cheapest health coverage available to retirees for just 750 dirhams per year while still allowing them to add on additional coverage and benefits if they so choose. Customers had been complaining about the exorbitant cost of buying separate health insurance coverage for themselves as they became older, so this was done to address their concerns.
In particular, residents demanded that insurance providers lower prices and offer insurance programmes that are compatible with financial income, citing the high cost of policies, the exclusion of many surgeries, and the difficulty of obtaining approvals from insurance providers to issue policies for elderly family members. To help households afford health insurance for their older members.
Health insurance policies for their elderly families between the ages of 60 and 70 were out of reach for Muhammad Siddiq, Firas Ali, Saher Al-Jundi, and Hala Ibrahim, who all reported being turned down by multiple insurance providers and paying a minimum of 8,000 dirhams per year for coverage. Some procedures and surgeries are not covered, and the patient is responsible for paying 30% of the cost of any necessary consultations or medications.
They were backed up by the arguments of Islam Fathi, Maram Saeed, and Abd al-Rahman al-Shibli, who pointed out that individual insurance premiums rose after the Corona pandemic, especially for the elderly, and that insurance providers now require extensive medical documentation before issuing a policy, even though doing so comes at a significant financial cost. Since these people do not work and have no income other than what they receive from their children, it is hoped that the cost of health insurance will be reevaluated for them.
Faisal Ismail, Khaled Rayan, and Yvonne Naji, representatives of various health insurance companies, confirmed that premiums vary depending on a number of factors, such as the insured's age, health history, the benefits offered by the document requested by the insured, the insurance company's medical network, the insured's endurance rate, and the policy's limits and scope of coverage. Geographic, emphasising that insurance companies provide the best possible protection against the high costs of medical care by offering a wide variety of health insurance policies to suit the needs of their consumers.
Health insurance rates in the UAE
Insurance industry experts, who are well-versed in the field, are responsible for setting premiums, they said, and since medical care is so expensive, most companies' individual medical insurance policies end up in the red after the insured person spends more than three days in the hospital or undergoes surgery. One where the price tag is higher than what the document is worth.
Insurance companies in the emirate offer four different types of health insurance policies, including the flexible health insurance policy and the basic health insurance policy; the Department of Health in Abu Dhabi confirmed the existence of this diversity for the benefit of the elderly living in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and obtaining them according to their desires.
With the introduction of this new type of health insurance in the emirate, the department explained that the flexible health insurance policy provides the lowest cost of health insurance that the elderly can benefit from, at a cost of 750 dirhams, with the possibility of enhancing benefits and expanding insurance coverage according to the customer's desire. Investors, owners of freelancing licences and their families and employees, private sector workers whose monthly income is greater than 5,000 dirhams, and residents and their employees who are not covered by their employer's health insurance plan are all listed as beneficiaries.
According to the department's description, the flexible health insurance policy's coverage for health services includes a maximum annual participation of 150,000 dirhams, with 80% coverage for treatment at outpatient clinics and 80% coverage at hospitals, with a maximum participation of 500 dirhams per visit and 1,000 dirhams annually. Normal deliveries are covered up to the limit of 7,000 dirhams, but caesarean sections and complications incur a maximum of 10,000 dirhams and are not covered at all.
Required Documents
According to the Abu Dhabi Department of Health, each health insurance provider has its own set of internal procedures for determining which documents are valid in order to issue health insurance. The total yearly cost of health insurance coverage as stated in this declaration.
