“A man paying cash gets preferential treatment in the hospital where I often go,” said one patient anonymously. He did not disclose the name of the hospital.
However, director of a private medical center in Jeddah, Yasser M., attributed the tendency of some hospitals to give preferential treatment to cash-paying patients to three factors.
“Some insurance companies want hospitals to use low-priced services and medicines in the treatment of insured patients,” he said.
“Another reason is that some hospital administrations demand doctors to increase hospital revenue by prescribing tests and analyses even if they are often unnecessary. The third reason is that many hospital managements pay a percentage of the daily income of hospitals to their doctors so that they are encouraged to raise hospital income.”
He claimed that in many cases doctors are not permitted to prescribe some medicines to a cardholding patient, either because the medication is either absent in the hospital pharmacy or because insurance companies do not approve certain medications apart from vitamins, food supplements and cosmetic items.
He added that approvals in many cases do not come, or are delayed.
Hasan Al-Obaidi, a private sector employee carrying a B class medical insurance card, complained that he is forced to interrupt his treatment because his insurance company insists that he should get monthly approval for the medicine he is taking for his liver complaint.
“The medicine is expensive and the insurance people do not give permission for the entire course of treatment,” he said.
However, Jeddah-based engineer Mohsen Awad claimed that all hospitals do not discriminate between cardholding and cash-paying patients because he has never had such an experience.
