Dubai and the United Arab Emirates in general, are known to be very generous when it comes to healthcare. The residents are willing to pay as much as needed to get high-quality medical services. The government, in its turn, makes sure that hospitals, clinics, insurances and any other health-related facilities have high standards and follow the international guidelines. It’s clear that a city that has a whole another city dedicated to healthcare (Dubai Healthcare City) allocates a lot of money for this industry. But how much exactly? How much do people in Dubai as well as the government spend on healthcare? Let’s shed light on this question together, shall we? All the numbers that we shall point out are derived from the first Health Accounts System of Dubai report published by  Dubai Health Authority.

Insurance companies cover 36%, the government 33%, households 22%

There are no current statistics available on how much was spent on healthcare but we got our hands on the data of 2012. Dubai spent around $272,250,000 on healthcare. Government and insurance companies almost shared the expenses by covering 36% and 33% respectively. While, 22% of the total costs, the patients had to pay by themselves. For Dubai, to let people pay 22% is a bad result in terms of leaving a good chunk of total cost on patients’ pockets. As a matter of fact, the worst in the Middle East. To put in dollars, people had to pay around $59,895,000 to get medical services in Dubai. Here is another interesting number, 48% of all spending went to the hospitals. Clinics are cheaper than hospitals, so this number indicates the people of Dubai trust hospitals more than clinics.

Which age group pays the most for healthcare in Dubai?

Dubai is a city of middle aged people, children under 4 and senior citizens over 65 make up only 5% of the population. You would think that those middle aged businessmen are the ones who spent money on healthcare, yet the numbers depict a different picture. 18% of all healthcare spendings came from children and elderly. Considering that these age groups tend to have more health problems than the middle aged one, the numbers make sense.

 

Healthcare sector is very wide, it includes hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, so on and so forth. Each of these facilities has its own costs and requires spendings of different amounts. The government tries to take care of as much of the expenses as possible, but people and insurance companies have their contributions too.