The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has made health insurance mandatory for expatriate workers. The law is aimed to ease the financial burden on the Saudi government, which offers free medical services to over 22 million people. The new cooperative health insurance program to be implemented in three phases would cover about 6 to 7 million expatriates. The first phase that was implemented in June 2006, required companies with more than 500 expatriate workers to provide medical insurance cover for their employees, and would cover 450 companies employing over 500,000 expatriates. The second phase would cover companies with 100 to 500 expatriate workers while the companies with a non-Saudi work force of less than 100 will be covered in the third and final phase. Medical insurance is expected to be made compulsory for the Saudi nationals, eventually.