CAIRO: A new health insurance draft law will be presented to Egypt's Shoura Council and People's Assembly in the upcoming parliamentary session, announced Magdy Rady, official spokesperson of the Cabinet of Ministers. The decision came after a meeting between Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, Minister of Finance Youssef Boutros-Ghali and Minister of Health Hatem El-Gabaly discussing the establishment of a health insurance and care system as well as primary health care units around the country. The new law will include key principles that aim at spreading health care to all citizens, in addition to implementing the concept of social solidarity, whereby the state, represented in the Ministry of Social Solidarity, will be paying for all low-income citizens. Nazif highlighted the importance of having a well-integrated health insurance system in order to meet the desired objectives and having proper primary health care units and public hospitals that are of high quality. He also noted that there needs to be a proper economic management of the system. The new health insurance system will be implemented gradually in governorates around Egypt, starting with places where an infrastructure to accommodate the program already exists. He referred to the pilot health insurance project which was executed in the governorate of Suez, where there was a new open enrollment system, improved access and coverage of low-income groups, expansion of the benefits package to include secondary care and building capacity at the local levels to sustain reforms. In a statement, Minister of Social Solidarity Ali Moselhi said that just as all families who are covered by the social solidarity system do not pay the tuition fees for their children's education based on an agreement with the Ministry of Education, they are seeking a similar agreement with the Ministry of Health in order to cover these families with health insurance, according to the official news portal, Egynews.net. In a press statement by the Ministry of Health, El-Gabaly said that over 27 million children in Egypt are covered by the umbrella of health insurance. Furthermore, the ministry is currently carrying on studies on the different ways of implementing the medical insurance system on children with disabilities and special needs.
