Morocco: Generalized Social Coverage Implemented

Morocco has announced that it has launched its plan to extend social coverage to 9 million beneficiaries, ultimately intended to cover 22 million people currently without health insurance. Farmers, artisans, traders, independent professionals and their families will be the first to be included in the compulsory health insurance scheme (AMO) in 2021 and 2022, according to an official statement released on Wednesday evening after a launching ceremony of the operation in the presence of King Mohammed VI. The AMO will then extend to workers in other sectors “with a view to the effective generalization of social protection to all citizens,” said the Minister of the Economy, Mohamed Benchaaboun, quoted in the press release.

Three framework agreements signed

With a view to optimum coverage, three framework conditions have been signed. The first framework agreement, which will impact more than 800,000 members, focused on the generalization of compulsory basic health insurance for the benefit of traders, craftsmen, professionals and independent providers subject to the single professional contribution regime, to the regime. of the autoentrepreneur or the accounting system. The second framework agreement, involving around 500,000 members, focused on the generalization of compulsory basic health insurance for the benefit of artisans and crafts professionals. As for the third framework agreement, it affects some 1.6 million members and concerns the generalization of compulsory basic health insurance for the benefit of farmers. “The implementation of this large-scale societal project constitutes a starting point for the achievement of the aspirations of His Majesty the King in favor of all components of Moroccan society in terms of responding to the challenge of the generalization of social protection », Underlined the Minister. And to add, quoted by the Moroccan press agency MAP: “It represents a lever for integrating the informal sector into the economic fabric so as to guarantee the protection of the working class and its rights, as well as a turning point. decisive on the path to achieving balanced development and social and spatial justice under the leadership of His Majesty the King. ”

A lesson learned from the Covid-19 pandemic

It should be remembered that the king launched this plan in July by stressing that the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic had notably highlighted “the weakness of social protection networks” for “the fringes of the population in a situation of large precariousness ”in this country of 36 million inhabitants. Since then, a framework law has been adopted in February in Parliament, also including generalization of access to family allowances, retirement and job loss indemnity by 2025 at an annual cost of 51 billion. of dirhams (4.7 billion euros). Currently, only employees of the Moroccan public and private sector benefit from medical coverage and millions of people are not covered in the event of a health problem.

A way to upgrade the medical sector

To measure the importance of this program of generalization of social protection, it should be remembered that Morocco is marked by significant social disparities which were complicated by the health crisis: the kingdom’s economy contracted by 7.1% in 2020 and the poverty rate jumped from 1.7 to 11.7% nationally during confinement, according to the HCP, the Moroccan institute in charge of statistics. The generalization of medical coverage will require improving health services, marked by a “low rate of medical supervision” and a “significant deficit in human resources”, warned the Minister of the Economy. He mentioned as a possible response “the opening of the practice of medicine to foreign skills, the encouragement of international health establishments to work and invest in Morocco”.