Small firms bound under new law to give health coverage to employees |
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RIYADH: Companies employing less than 50 people will now fall under the Kingdom's mandatory health insurance coverage scheme.
But insurance analysts have expressed concern over the lack of adequate coordination between the implementing authorities and the insurance companies. The mandatory health insurance scheme for approximately three million workers of small and medium-sized companies in the Kingdom is making progress, but without sufficient coordination, they say.
"Was any study conducted on the financial situation of small establishments in the Kingdom before the project's implementation, and will it adversely affect the future of companies?" insurance analyst Abdallah Saati was quoted as saying in a report published in an Arabic daily on Sunday.
He said that the insurance companies presently operating in the Kingdom do not have the capacity to offer insurance coverage to all the workers in small and medium-sized firms. "The hasty implementation of the scheme will only create confusion in hospitals," he said.
Fahd Al-Anazi, another insurance analyst, warned that the inclusion of three million workers in the health insurance system would raise the cost of health services by 60 percent. He did not explain how.
However, Fahd Al-Hammad, chairman of the Small and Medium Establishments Promotion Committee at the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that small and medium-sized establishments would not face any difficulty in implementing the medical insurance scheme. Al-Hammad added that the health insurance policies would cover outpatient, inpatient, pregnancy and childbirth, emergency and death cases and preventive medicine. He also stressed the need to get rid of inefficient insurance companies. Secretary-General of the Health Insurance Council Abdullah Al-Shareef said that about one million domestic workers would also be covered under the mandatory health insurance scheme in its next phase.
© Arab News 2008
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