ArmInfo. Under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, meetings of the selection commission were held to choose members of the Board of Trustees of the Universal Health Insurance Fund and its general director, the press service of the cabinet of ministers reports.
As a result of the vote, the following members of the Board of Trustees were elected: Shant Shekherdimyan — head of pediatric surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) hospital; Vardui Petrosyan — dean of the Faculty of Public Health at the American University of Armenia; Artashes Tonoyan — director of the Yerevan branch of the World Trade Center; Tumas Palu — advisor to the World Health Organization (WHO) representation in Ukraine; Khodam Rostomyan — regional director for Kaiser Permanente.
Ruben Melkonyan, chief financial officer of Kazakhstan’s Bereke Bank, was elected as the fund’s general director. According to Nikol Pashinyan, the selection of Board members and the general director was guided by the logic that the government, the Ministry of Health, beneficiaries, the medical community, the Board of Trustees and the general director will form a system of checks and balances that, in turn, will ensure the overall development and success of the fund and the universal health insurance system as a whole.
Note that the Universal Compulsory Health Insurance (UCHI) system in Armenia officially came into force on January 1, 2026. Implementation is planned over three years and divided into three main stages. From 2026, about 1.6–1.7 million residents joined the UCHI system.
They are divided into two key groups. Categories with 100% state subsidy: children under 18, people over 65, citizens with disabilities (groups I, II and III), and socially disadvantaged families (those scoring 28 or more vulnerability points). Their costs are fully covered by the state. Premium payers: salaried employees with a monthly salary from 200,001 drams, as well as self-employed entrepreneurs and notaries with an annual income over 2.4 million drams.
They pay for the basic package themselves (129,600 drams per year). From January 1, 2027, salaried employees with monthly wages below 200,000 drams will be compulsorily included in the system. In the third stage, UCHI will become mandatory for all remaining categories of citizens and residents, including the self-employed, persons without official income, and agricultural workers and their family members.
