RIYADH — The official spokesman of the Council of Cooperative Health Insurance (CCHI), Yasser Al-Marik confirmed that the Health Insurance Fund has recently approved its operational plan, which will be launched at the end of this year. The plan will have a huge impact on the private-sector health insurance, especially on the segment that has exhausted the coverage of the health insurance policy of SR500,000, he added. Al-Marik noted that the Cooperative Health Insurance Fund Program achieves the strategic objectives of the council, including enabling groups to obtain full coverage and protection, enabling health insurance companies and health care providers to raise the level of their services in the presence of advanced regulations and policies, in addition to improving sustainability and innovation in the sector. He said that the council will finance the fund in its first stage, until examining other financing options in the following stages, while the laws and regulations of the fund will be launched at the end 2020. Al-Marik noted that the fund would pay for treating cases that its treatment cost exceeds the upper limit of the insurance policy, especially in small and medium enterprises, which constitutes 99.4% of the total private sector. He added that the Health Insurance Fund will reduce financial risks to those companies and increase the ability to bear the costs of health insurance for employers, pointing out that 60% of the workforce in the private sector will benefit from the services of the fund. — SPA