Although affordable healthcare leads to people choosing to queue up at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) for a consultation, oftentimes it is easier and faster to get consulted at a private hospital. This ease of burden, however, comes with a hefty price tag that many have come to question.
Maldives Voice
The Maldives is surely one of the countries where citizens have an easier time accessing healthcare. While countries like America struggle to establish a good healthcare system that is accessible and affordable, the Maldives managed to make the healthcare system somewhat accessible as well as reasonably affordable through the national insurance scheme ‘Husnuvaa Aasandha’. Through this scheme, citizens are able to get discounted rates on appointments with specialised doctors, hospital procedures as well as medicine.
While Aasandha provides these benefits, health insurance can only offer so much - as the state bears the cost of the insurance, making it an extremely expensive scheme to budget for. With this, it is still true that although Maldivians have better access to affordable healthcare than most, there is still a long way to go before the healthcare sector in the Maldives is perfect. One of the main failings in the sector as of right now is that although Aasandha covers the cost of non-private tertiary hospitals, the top-notch healthcare available in private hospitals such as TreeTop and ADK hospital is still unaffordable for the average person.
Although affordable healthcare leads to people choosing to queue up at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH) for a consultation, oftentimes it is easier and faster to get consulted at a private hospital. This ease of burden, however, comes with a hefty price tag that many have come to question.
Most people these days opt for the private sector to receive a quicker surgery or consultation. Additionally, persons who travel to Male' from islands for medical care are also posed with increasing barriers related to food and accommodation. Therefore, they seek the faster healthcare treatments. There are many loopholes we need to amend.
Shedding some light and hope to lift these expensive medical burdens on citizens, Aminath Zeeniya, the Managing Director of Aasandha stated that although the procedures offered at these private hospitals are not high, the final bill ends up being extremely costly. Zeeniya also noted the reasoning for people opting to go to private hospitals such as TreeTop or even ADK while free healthcare is available at IGMH and Dharumavantha Hospital. Speaking on the issue, Zeeniya pointed out a struggle that people often face - the long waiting times at IGMH or Dharumavantha. Due to the high cost of private sector hospitals, almost everyone signs up for a consultation at private hospitals - meaning it may take weeks or even months to get an appointment at either IGMH or Dharumavantha. This has created a major issue of citizens having to take up extremely expensive bills at private sector hospitals just to get the medical services that they need.
With this issue worsening over the years, Zeeniya highlighted some positive measures that the Government is looking to take by introducing package prices so that hospitals cannot demand higher prices than what is agreed on. As Maldivian healthcare continues to be on the rise, such packages can ensure that hospitals do not charge exorbitant prices for services that do not need to be so costly. With such an intervention from the Government through introduced package prices, citizens may finally get access to quicker, easier, and more affordable healthcare from private hospitals as well. Not only will this resolve the issue of pricing, but this may also ease up the demand at IGMH and Dharumavantha - which will undoubtedly lead to less waiting time at hospitals.
