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INSURANCE IN CHALLENGING TIMES Simon Fisher, Executive Vice President - Gulf, ACE Group discusses the probable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on private healthcare insurance and government funded public sectors
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s the world holds its collective breath over the full human and geographical impact of COVID-19, which is developing on an hourly basis and which remains unclear amidst the uncertainty of exponential transmission rates, one common consideration is to what extent private insurance policies respond to the cost of treatment in countries that adopt a predominantly private healthcare model. Technically, and as a general rule, now that the virus has been classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a ‘pandemic’, healthcare policies will no longer respond to the treatment of a policyholder who has been diagnosed with COVID-19, due to policy exclusions which recognise this change. Notably in UAE, health authorities stipulate minimum coverage requirements in order for policies to be deemed regulation compliant. One service listed ‘outside of the scope of health insurance’ by the Dubai Health Authority is treatment for “all healthcare services for internationally and/ or locally recognized epidemics.” This exclusion is designed, of course, to ensure that health insurance providers will not face crippling and unsustainable losses in the face of a pandemic. The question then becomes whether the state will pick up the cost of care. Depending on the number of diagnosed members and the rate of growth in any one country, insurers may still cover the associated costs as a gesture of goodwill. However, if the situation continues to deteriorate then we can expect insurers to
SMARTSMB / April 2020
Simon Fisher
Executive Vice President - Gulf, ACE Group
