Healthcare in Dubai: your employer insures you, the family is your bill

Yes, in Dubai you are required to be insured, and for anyone taking up employment most of it is arranged: the law puts the premium for you on your employer, who may not recover it from your pay. For your partner and children it is different: there you, as sponsor, are responsible, and that is an item that does not come up in many recruitment conversations. The Dutch side is short. The Emirates are not a treaty country, so there is no CAK route: your basic insurance stops when you leave and nothing automatically takes its place.

Who must be insured, and who pays?

Dubai's health insurance law of 2013 splits the duty in two:

• The employer insures its employees, bears the cost, and may not pass it on to the insured person. It must show the policy when your residence permit is issued or renewed, and it pays for emergency care if it has not insured you after all.
• The sponsor insures the people it sponsors who have no employer doing so. It bears that cost itself, and it too must show the policy when their residence permits are issued or renewed.

Whoever brings their family to Dubai is that sponsor. The government portal puts it in one sentence: employers insure their employees, sponsors insure their dependants. According to the same portal, the extent of cover depends on your salary and your position, and therefore on what your employer agrees.

Whoever breaks the law risks a fine of AED 500 to AED 150,000, and double that for a repeat within a year, up to AED 500,000.

What does the basic policy cover?

Since 1 January 2025 private sector employers must take out health insurance as a condition for issuing or renewing a residence permit; in Dubai and Abu Dhabi this is compulsory. The government portal describes the basic policy of that system as follows:

Item	What you pay yourself
Premium	AED 320 per year
Inpatient	20% co-payment, at most AED 500 per admission, AED 1,000 per year including medicines
Outpatient	25% co-payment, at most AED 100 per visit
Follow-up within 7 days, same condition	no co-payment
Medicines	at most 30% co-payment, AED 1,500 per year
Age	1 to 64 years; above that a medical disclosure with recent reports

Above the annual caps on co-payments the insurer pays everything. According to the portal, family members can get the same cover at the same price, and whoever is chronically ill has no waiting period under this package. If your visa is cancelled, the premium for the second year can be refunded.

This is a base, not a Dutch package. What falls outside it depends on the policy your employer chooses; ask for the policy conditions before you sign, not at your first hospital visit.

Why is there no CAK route?

Because the Netherlands has no treaty with the Emirates on medical costs. The CAK lists the treaty countries: the EU, the EEA, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and a handful of countries beyond, such as Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. The Emirates are not among them, and the CAK is clear about what that means: take out your own insurance, for yourself and for the family members who move with you.

That makes the order important. You cancel your Dutch basic insurance as of the day you deregister; how to do that without a gap is explained in cancelling your health insurance without a gap. Between that day and the day your Dubai policy starts, you are insured nowhere.

Watch the first weeks. Your employer must show the policy when your residence permit is issued, and that only follows after your arrival: you travel in on an entry permit and then have sixty days to complete the medical test, Emirates ID and visa. Ask your employer in writing from which day the policy runs, and bridge the days before with travel insurance that covers medical costs. The same applies to your family until their own policy starts.

What must be arranged before departure?

Three things. The policy for your family: ask your employer whether it includes the family in the group policy; if not, you take it out yourself and it is a cost item that belongs in the salary negotiation. Your medicines: NederlandWereldwijd advises checking whether you need a medicines certificate and taking medicines in their original packaging. Your medical file: ask your GP for a summary in English.

For the residence visa everyone aged eighteen and over has a medical test. Whoever wants a residence permit must, according to the government portal, be free of communicable diseases such as HIV and TB. That is a test for the visa, not part of your insurance, but include it in the planning of your first weeks.

What do you look out for in your contract?

The law makes sure your employer insures you, not how well. So ask for three things on paper: which policy it is, whether your family is covered, and what the cover is outside the Emirates. The last one matters for anyone who travels to the Netherlands regularly. And because your employer links the policy to your residence permit, your cover moves with your job; whoever changes employer checks that the new policy starts on the day the old one stops.

In Vertrekklaar this is phase 2 of 5 of the journey, step 2.3: the same steps, but for your situation — in your order, tickable, and with the deadlines watched. See the whole journey to Dubai or go straight to step 2.3 in the open plan.