CCHI warns against insurance restrictions

JEDDAH: The Council of Cooperative Health Insurance (CCHI) has warned against limiting the number of children covered by the insurance policy of employees.
“The company or employer has no right to define the number of insured children in the policy of an employee; the wife and all children up to the age of 25, in addition to unmarried females for whom there is no cap on their age, must be covered in the insurance scheme,” said a statement from the CCHI on Twitter.
The CCHI stressed in its tweets that defining the number of covered children in the insurance policy is a violation of the regulations and the employee in such cases has the right to file a complaint.
Abdulrahman Aldosari, an official at a medical insurance company said that according to the insurance regulations, the employer cannot define the number of children included in the medical insurance policy.
The reason behind such tactics from employers, said Aldosari, is the difficult financial situations of some companies which leads them to ask their employees to choose only two of their children to insure, and obliges the employee to pay for the insurance of the rest. This practice has angered some employees who have filed complaints with the CCHI. The CCHI investigated the issue and affirmed that this constitutes a violation of the regulations and will attract the payment of fines by the company for their misconduct.