Compulsory private medical cover is not likely to be introduced in Qatar until next year, a leading health insurance adviser operating in the country has suggested.
Amber Musson-Thorp, group commercial director – MEA at Lifecare International, told Health & Protection’s IPMI Summit about her experiences of working in the country and of the likely delay from starting this month.
She told delegates while only around 10% of Qatar’s population is covered by private medical insurance, the impending World Cup in the country will be the cause of further delays to the introduction of compulsory health insurance for the whole population.
The World Cup has caused an infrastructure building boom across the country, but according to Musson-Thorp (pictured) by July authorities want the construction labour that worked on these projects out of the country.
“By July they want the labour gone,” she said.
“They want all the labour gone out of the country so there’s enough infrastructure space for people to be moving around, going to stadia, making it look pretty – this is a big deal for Qatar.
“Most of the people who aren’t covered [by health insurance] in construction are going to be leaving the country halfway through the year and companies are not going to want to pay a year’s worth of premiums for construction people that are leaving the country.
“We are trying to budget for all of this and they’re saying it might not happen until Q3/Q4 but it’s not going to happen when the World Cup’s on so realistically we’re looking at next year now.”
She highlighted that disruption was expected to be significant for daily life during the World Cup, with all private companies shut down for two months and people mandated to work from home, with roads only used for public transport.
‘Not going to pay until they have to’
It was announced early last year that compulsory medical insurance would be introduced in Qatar with it initially expected in autumn of 2021, but this was then put back to this month.
“They did make the official announcement back at the end of last year that it would happen by May so what we saw was a huge influx in terms of pipeline growing, people budgeting, trying to ask for insurance,” Musson-Thorp continued.
“But of course it’s completely stunted the market because people are not going to pay for it until they absolutely have to.
“Trying to budget for this year has been insane because we’ve put in something like four times what we wrote last year as a target on the basis of compulsory, but it’s now not happening,” she added.
