Different types of insurance have become a common thing in Uganda of late and among these is medical insurance. Nowadays, medical insurance is no longer confined to only the corporate world but to all those who can meet the criteria outlined by different insurance policies.
However, it seems all that glitters is not gold, especially from what these medical insurance packages always entail. Taking to social media, journalist Gabriel Buule opened up a can of worms about these various medical insurances.
Shockingly his followers seemed to agree with his opinion from their own firsthand experience. According to Buule, he was told by a medical friend that his patients on medical insurance in Uganda don’t receive quality medication.
Although they are given the same bills as the private/ cash patients, the type of drugs given to those on insurance are of less quality. The doctors can’t prescribe the quality drugs for those patients on insurance. Therefore this always translates into disrespect and being cheated on the insurance based patients.
“My medic friend recently told me that although they are billed like privately sponsored patients; Patients on insurance are given less quality medicine. Doctors can’t prescribe, say, a German drug for an insurance patient. Medical insurance comes with cheating and disrespect,” said Gabriel Buule.
Many of the opinions agreed with this take. Even those who hadn’t noticed the pattern started putting one to two and finally discovered that they have been getting cheated. Another local journalist narrated how she was faced with the same challenge at IHK while giving birth.
“When I gave birth at an international hospital, cash patients were treated like queens, I rather felt like I was at HC II. They didn’t even give me a crib and when we asked, my sisters were told to walk around and look for one. I would later realize insurance was the problem,” narrated this female journalist.
Well this is not the first time that Ugandans are coming out to express their dissatisfaction with different insurance policies. Many feel that these cheat them whilst providing mediocre services.
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Insurance companies in Uganda that provide health insurance include Prudential, Jubilee, UAP, AAR, Sanlam, ICEA, Liberty, and many others. They are always selling different insurance policies and the health one is among them.
