JEDDAH — The delay in renewing health insurance policies raised concern among Saudi scholarship students pursuing higher studies at reputable universities and institutions abroad. Mohammed Al-Eissa, Saudi cultural attaché in the US, downplayed the fears, saying that the delay was caused by the change of insurance company. "The Aetna Insurance Company provided health coverage for our students in the past. Recently we changed the company and contracted with United Insurance to provide the service," Al-Eissa told Al-Hayat daily. "This (health insurance) is one of the major services being provided by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Foreign Scholarship Program to Saudi students," Al-Eissa said. Parents said their children had to face a lot of difficulties due to the delay in issuing the new health insurance cards as they had to pay their medical bills from own pockets. "Even for a minor illness they have to spend SR1,000 and we transfer money to our children's accounts to meet their medical expenses," one parent told the daily. The father of Noura Fahd, a Saudi student in the US, said his daughter had not received the medical insurance card from the cultural attaché. "She has been suffering from asthma, which requires expensive treatment and medication. Sometimes, she needs hospital admission for hours to receive specialized treatment," he explained. Fahd and her colleagues have been contacting the cultural attaché to get insurance cards but so far they have not received any reply. "The delay has crossed two months and hope the students would be compensated for the delay and reimbursed their medical bills," he said. Meanwhile, Saudi students in Turkey said they are not aware of the reason for the delay in issuing medical insurance cards. Some of them told Al-Hayat that it was because of a glitch in the system while others said they were expecting radical changes in the system. Students in the UK also have not received their insurance cards. The cultural attaché in Britain had informed students how to use the cards and they have no clue about the delay. The attaché urged all students to inform whether they needed any correction in the insurance cards. But until today, they have not received the new cards.
