Iran Health Insurance Organization (IHIO)

The Iran Health Insurance Organization is the public insurer affiliated with the Ministry of Health. A 2021 policy analysis lists its five funds: government employees, the self-employed, rural residents (and towns under 20,000 people), the universal insurance coverage fund created in 2014 under the Health Transformation Plan for people with no insurance, and other groups such as students and people with disabilities; it gives 2018 membership of 5,413,088 for government employees, 19,969,227 for rural residents, 14,441,544 for universal coverage and 1,438,973 for other groups.

Its own page on insurance for special patients, read in Persian from an Internet Archive copy of 23 April 2021, defines special patients as people with haemophilia, thalassaemia, multiple sclerosis, haemodialysis, kidney transplant and peritoneal dialysis, who receive free cover; cancer is not on that list. A news item it published on 27 Farvardin 1402 (16 April 2023), read the same way, quotes its director-general of specialised services: about 665,000 people carry a marker for a special or hard-to-treat disease, 30% of them had used the matching package, the commonest markers are diabetes, hypertension, cancer, multiple sclerosis and dialysis, and cancer is among the conditions with the highest spending in the special and hard-to-treat diseases fund, whose benefits follow a package issued by the Ministry of Health. ihio.gov.ir did not answer from here on 4 November 2026.