More room exists for growth in the health insurance market in the Middle East but this is unlikely to happen until change occurs at the government level, according to an expert.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are two of the fastest-growing markets for health insurance in the GCC region, in part because of universal healthcare legislation, reported the Gulf News Journal.
“Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have grown tremendously over the past few years, given swift universal healthcare coverage legislation over the past decade; however, I sternly believe that both Qatar and Kuwait have the capacity to grow at a faster rate given the most recent legislation,” Dr Mussaad Al-Razouki, Chief Business Development Officer of Kuwait Life Sciences, said.
Qatar’s capacity to grow, however, has been temporarily stymied as its mandatory health insurance programme was suspended in December. Qatari nationals must now purchase insurance from the private sector if they wish to remain insured.
Meanwhile, Kuwait has taken major steps toward universal health insurance, Dr Al-Razouki said. “This is especially apparent in Kuwait, whereby the government has launched two very important initiatives aimed at developing a more sustainable economic model for the Kuwaiti healthcare system,” he said.
Those initiatives are the Kuwait Health Assurance Company and insurance for retirees. The Kuwait Health Assurance Company is a public-private partnership which has worked together to establish a health organisation with three 250-bed hospitals, 10 clinics and a single-day surgery centre.
In order to continue growing the health insurance market in the Middle East, Dr Al-Razouki said regulators should encourage investors to focus on the niche areas of healthcare.
“GCC regulators should be more supportive of companies that specialise in one specific sector of the insurance market, as this is the trend internationally,” he said. “GCC governments must also look to the private sector to find new models of health system financing to ease the burden on the local healthcare economy.”