Sonia H Moni
The government is going to take an initiative to provide group health insurance coverage to 1.0 million government employees, officials said.
"The government is planning to provide the insurance coverage through Jiban Bima Corporation (JBC), the lone state-owned life insurance company in Bangladesh," JBC Managing Director Parikshit Datta Chowdhury told the FE.
He said a conceptual paper has been made in this connection by a Bangladesh-born actuarial consultant now settled in Australia.
An actuarial consultant is a professional who advises clients which methods, processes, policies, plans, etc they should consider when making financial, insurance or pension-related decisions.
Actuarial consultants calculate and analyse statistics, make forecasts, provide the most accurate information to clients and help them realise what their best options are.
Mr Chowdhury said, "We have already talked to officials of the ministry of public administration (MoPA) based on the conceptual paper of health insurance for government employees."
The MoPA and JBC will jointly implement the health insurance programme.
Initially, each of the officials and workers of the MoPA will give the annual premium.
Under the scheme, an employee and his or her spouse and two children (under 21 years) will get treatment facilities.
The total amount of insurance for an insurer will be Tk 1.0 million. The annual hospital facilities will be worth Tk 200,000. Annual premium will be between Tk 22,000 and Tk 25,000 (to be fixed after negotiation) and monthly premium will be Tk 2,000 (to be fixed after negotiation).
The health insurance holders will get cost of staying in hospital, medicine, physiotherapy and normal or Caesarean delivery (twice), nursing fee, surgeon fee, anaesthesia fee, doctor's advice fee, surgery (critical, medium and small) fee, intensive care unit fee, ward fee (including labour fee) and blood, oxygen, dialysis and operation theatre charges.
The health insurance coverage holders will get treatment facilities for different critical diseases like cancer, stroke, coronary artery disease, renal failure and sclerosis and death risk.
The JBC MD said: "We have taken initiative to discuss the issue with the Pay Commission so that the total premium amount can be separately allocated in the budget for this purpose which will be disbursed to us starting from any fiscal year."
