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A meeting chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was held to discuss the steps to be taken in 2027 under the Universal Health Insurance implementation strategy, the Information and Public Relations Department of the Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia said in a statement.
In particular, the specific features of the strategy for 2027 and the possibilities of including people earning a monthly salary of up to AMD 200,000 in the system were presented. The meeting also addressed the involvement of employers in the payment of insurance premiums and the continuation of the policy of subsidising insurance premiums for employees from the state budget.
The participants exchanged views on setting the insurance premium rate to be paid by employees depending on their salary level.
Nikol Pashinyan noted that possible scenarios are being discussed in connection with several issues: “One direction, of course, is simply the need to include people in the Universal Health Insurance system. The second is the assumption that, in the lower salary segment, according to our conviction and understanding, certain shadow schemes are in operation. The Government also faces the task of addressing the social issue without encouraging the shadow economy. This is why we are holding such discussions.”
The Prime Minister presented the Government’s current approaches to including citizens earning up to AMD 200,000 in the system from January 1, 2027: “During 2027, the Government may subsidise AMD 4,400 of the required AMD 10,800 cost, employees may pay AMD 2,000 — the AMD 2,000 they previously paid to the Zinapah Foundation until January 1, 2026 — and employers may pay the remaining AMD 4,400. This would naturally be on the condition that if the salary changes, increases and exceeds the AMD 200,000 threshold, citizens earning that amount would be included in the existing system designed for those earning AMD 200,000 or more.
“This is our current thinking at this stage, but what follows is also important. We envisage that, perhaps from January 1, 2028, we could introduce the following scenario: the employee would pay AMD 6,000 of the AMD 10,800 cost, which they would subsequently receive back in 2028 as a social credit upon filing the universal income declaration. In other words, in practical terms, not much would change in the citizen’s life, while the employer would continue to pay the remaining AMD 4,800, again on the condition that the salary remains below AMD 200,000. Once it exceeds the AMD 200,000 threshold, the system would operate under the general terms to be decided at that time.”
In this context, Pashinyan said it would be beneficial if employers used the opportunity to review their decisions and paid as many employees as possible salaries of AMD 200,000 or more: “Of course, this issue also exists in the public administration system, and we must also consider how to address it within the public administration system.”
Summing up, Nikol Pashinyan said: “At this stage, we are sufficiently satisfied with the implementation of the Universal Health Insurance system, but at the same time, we must understand that it is a dynamic system that needs to be maintained and continuously monitored. In other words, we have set the goal of ensuring that all segments of the population are included in the system by January 1, 2029, but that does not mean that our work will be finished.
“The system must always be monitored because of changes in the market, the economy and salaries. There are also interconnections with the social credit system. We must continuously monitor and discuss these issues so that we can ensure the overall health of the system.”
At the same time, Nikol Pashinyan emphasised the importance of ensuring the quality of services provided and maintaining the financial health of the system.
“We say that the purchasing power of pensioners’ pensions essentially needs to be indexed because inflation is inevitable. Inflation is also inevitable for the health insurance system because it affects everything. We will also need to address these issues in the future,” the Prime Minister concluded.