DUBAI // About 90 per cent of the emirate’s population has access to essential medical cover, Dubai Health Authority (DHA) said as the deadline passed for all companies to comply with the mandatory insurance law.
Dr Haidar Al Yousuf, DHA’s director of public health funding, said that after the final phase of the plan, covering companies with 100 or fewer employees and including domestic workers and dependants of employees, most of Dubai’s 3.8 million people were covered.
He praised companies for helping to ensure a smooth rollout of the scheme.
“I remember the days when this was a concept on a piece of paper so for it, al hamdilullah, to be a reality and come to life and go so well is a success for all involved,” said Dr Al Yousuf.
“There are always difficulties with a plan of this size but we are very happy to have finally reached this point. The good thing about this plan is it has managed to cross the fine balance between providing everyone with access to care and shouldering the cost to the economy.
“We have kept prices competitive and it really does what the law set out for the emirate of Dubai. It has managed to tick all the boxes, so we are happy.”
DHA completed the first phase, which included companies with more than 1,000 employees, in 2014. The second phase, those with 999 to 100 employees, was finished last year.
The deadline for the final stage was last Thursday.
“This plan was done this way because the third group was the most complex,” said Dr Al Yousuf, who noted that there were about 135,000 companies with fewer than 100 employees in the emirate.
He said that about 40 per cent of these companies already had health-insurance schemes in place for its employees before the law came into force.
“These are deadlines, not starting points,” Dr Al Yousuf said. “So even beforehand there were companies that were insuring employees and then, gradually, as we ran awareness schemes, more companies began implementing health insurance.”
Many companies, he said, chose not to go for the basic package but for “middle-of-the-road” packages, with some larger firms in sectors such as banking or financial services taking more enhanced coverage.
Dr Al Yousuf said final counts on compliance would be done over the next fortnight. He estimated at least 80 per cent of smaller companies had complied by the end of last month and “more than 90 per cent” of Dubai’s population were now covered by insurance.
While most companies have been forthcoming, there was “the few that you have to resort to penalties and the like to ensure they comply”.
In the coming weeks the companies that have failed to comply could face fines of up to Dh500,000, although none have been fined.
The DHA is working with the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs to ensure that visas are not issued or renewed for workers whose employers have not paid for health insurance.
It was announced that sponsors who failed to provide health insurance for themselves and dependants by the June 30 deadline would not face fines this year.
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