(MENAFN- Muscat Daily) Muscat- In an exclusive interview to Muscat Daily, Peter Hodgins, partner at Clyde & Co said that implementation of mandatory health insurance for all workers might take a while as there are lots of regulation related challenges, which need to be addressed first. The universal implementation of compulsory medical insurance is a huge task involving number of stakeholders ranging from a worker at lowest level to highest authorities in Health Ministry.
Why do you expect mandatory health insurance in Oman to take some more time before it is fully available across the country?
I think it will be a challenge to implement mandatory health insurance as it is a very complex area. And I think preparing legislations, setting up a mechanism for grievances addressing and finalising other regulations will take certain amount of time. We have some statements saying that mandatory health insurance in Oman may commence as early as January next year. I can't say whether it is viable or not as many things would depend on what is already being done in the background. But I can say that it sounds like a very ambitious target. Given the Council of Ministers' announcement in September last year only, certainly there is lots of work need to be done first such as basic policy frameworks, developing systems and controls along with other measures to ensure that access to healthcare is available to everyone in the country.
Why is so much of work needed to launch mandatory healthcare when the country already has a good network of hospitals - private as well as government owned. There are also a large number of insurance companies operating in Oman?
Implementing mandatory health insurance for all is a huge task and it involves a number of stakeholders starting from insurance companies, medical services providers, insurance agents, employers, employees and a host of other intermediaries. It also needs a clear regulation on what constitutes rights, responsibilities and liabilities of each one of them. So effective measures are needed to ensure that everyone has access to healthcare, and controls are also needed to ensure that there isn't any fraud happening.
Keeping such a huge task in mind, how do you see things unfolding in the future? What is the way forward for Oman?
Other countries such as Saudi Arabia or Dubai for example, have taken a phased implementation rather than rolling out mandatory health insurance entirety of the private sector. They have started it by doing in different bands and in different time phases, either starting with the largest companies having more than 2,000 employees and slowly working down through the brackets. Or it can be done in other way round where starting from smaller companies or individuals, it can move upward. It needs to be done in a phased manner so as to prevent the initial rush, where everyone would be racing to get the insurance on the first day of implementation. We have seen examples, where the whole implementation period can span up to two-three years of time before it is fully rolled out across the country. So based on what I have seen in other locations, it appears that Capital Market Authority (CMA) would most likely opt a phased manner.
Have you interacted with authorities in Oman or other stakeholders on what could possibly be the way to introduce mandatory health insurance in the sultanate?
Reading from all the communications sent by the regulator and based on what I have seen so far here, it appears that it will apply a phased approach for rolling out health insurance across the country.
So initially it could start from making it compulsory for visitors to have health insurance before they enter the country. It makes sense also as it would decrease the burden on both state as well as an individual in case of any medical emergencies, which a tourist or other visitor might face during the visit.
This could be a relatively easier way to start implementing it. Many European countries have similar regulations where you have to buy medical cover for the trip before entering the country and most likely Dubai is also planning to introduce a similar regulation.
So what stage are things at currently and when do you expect things to start moving effectively on the ground?
What we heard is that the CMA is working seriously on preparing regulations. Recently they have restructured all the five departments under the supervision of the insurance sector team at the CMA. As a part of this restructuring exercise they have created a health insurance supervision department under the CMA. So, they have created a team of specialists to study, understand and prepare detailed regulations for the sector. And frankly speaking there is much more work needed to be done before implementing mandatory health insurance scheme across the country. There are challenges if you get it wrong. We have the example of Qatar in the region, who earlier tried to implement mandatory health insurance but failed in doing so and has gone back to drawing board to rework it.
What are the key challenges likely to be faced by authorities in implementing mandatory health insurance? What could possibly go wrong if it is not implemented properly?
There are a couple of challenges before the authorities, which need to be addressed first. You have two potentially problematic situations. One is that who will be offering these services in the country. For instances in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, there are some qualified insurance companies were allowed to provide insurance service whereas in Qatar a centralised authority was created for providing insurance services, which led to logistic challenges. Another challenges is around pricing as authorities are looking to provide mandatory health cover to all, so you have to price in such a way that it is affordable to all and at the same time, you have to ensure that service providers are able to maintain profitability on a sustainable basis. This means if it is priced at too high, it would become inaccessible to a large section of the population and if the prices are kept too low, it could seriously damage the insurance sector in the country.
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