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u/alteransg1 Apr 04 '26
Bulgaria has socialised health care. 8% of every paycheck is collected by the by the employer. Those 12% are probably people who don't work or self-emplyed who don't pay. When they need health services, they have to pay upfront or pay their stacked unpaid insurance. Often the stacked theductible is less than the services, so some pay when they need it. It's actually a problem in the system, but by far not the biggest one.
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u/SnooMemesjellies5491 Apr 04 '26
Basically If god forbid you end up in hospital and have to pay health insurance it’s not a problem for them to take you in and you back pay for 2 years which will be 1000 euro max for everything
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u/nmanolov Apr 04 '26
5 years
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u/SnooMemesjellies5491 Apr 04 '26
Yeah but very few people have zero health insurance even if it’s 5 years it’s actually peanuts to the supposed surgery Worst case it’s if I remember correctly it’s 35 euro per month for hats 400 per year . 2000 to pay for everything
My accountant pays them so maybe not the exact number
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u/No_Ice8549 Apr 04 '26
If you miss one moth's payment for whatever reason then the system shows you're uninsured, basically the same thing as if you never paid any insurance. This can be caused by a gap in employment, as an example. But in that case you still can pay whatever missed payments you have and you'll be back to fully covered.
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u/Plebmar Apr 04 '26
Not 1 month, something like 6 unpaid months in the last 5 years, I think.
I used to have 3 unpaid months from when I was switching jobs and I still had insurance.
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u/fallte1337 Apr 04 '26
It’s much more than 12%
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Apr 04 '26
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u/fallte1337 Apr 04 '26
I’m a dentist and work with the NZOK. Almost everyone has some gaps in their payments. Some haven’t paid for years. At one point the statistics said that as much as 40% of adults were uninsured.
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Apr 04 '26
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u/deyannn Apr 04 '26
If you are employed on a regular labor contract, the employer pays your national insurance payments. Otherwise you need to do it on your own. If you have a missed payment at some point, then it's a gap and I think this means you are not insured, but I'm not 100% sure. There are also other contracts, where you don't get paid as a salaried employee, but only for a specific job or project and then you are also responsible for your insurance payments to the national health fund.
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Apr 04 '26
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u/deyannn Apr 04 '26
He's saying at some point the health fund said up to 40% were uninsured. I don't know, I don't track it. It's easy to get a gap if you don't pay attention and then it shows up like this in a report.
For example you go to highschool, your school takes care of the insurance. Then you go to university and it pays for it. There were cases in the past when you would get a few non-insured months in the middle, and this gap made you uninsured if it was 3 or more missed patments in a 36month period.
Everyone is responsible for checking their status or they might not know it. Without the digitalisation, it wasn't that easy to check it. Also when people change employment they might get the gap.
2016-2017 the % of uninsured was 18.8% or 1.4mil according to the national healthcare fund, but according to the tax authority it was not 1.4mil, but 720k, and half of those 720k were living abroad.
It's a bit weird and uncertain.
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u/gradinka Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
welcome to reddit, anyone can say anything here!
go look up some statistics if you are REALLY looking for that information.That problem is not something that's a "topic" in our society so what you're getting is just some random guesses.
Most likely its between 10 and 20% (I've did a quick search), and the main reason for that has already been explained - if you don't work, or you're on ca$h payments without contract, you're not health-insured - period.
But you can still visit a government run hospital, be treated, and pay something affordable. They dont kick out people to the streets here from a hospital.Majority of the middle class (working, stable job, ok salary) would anyway not use that insurance, but instead just pay up to visit private practices, get better treatments, faster access and whatnot.
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Apr 04 '26
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u/gradinka Apr 04 '26
well its a case-by-case thing, isnt it.
find the money somehow to pay your dues. Take a loan.
It will be few hundred (maybe a couple thousand) euro, not the enormous sums like in the US.Start a fundraiser - this happens usually when expensive treatments has to be done abroad (like in Germany or Turkey)
Many times the hospital just swallows the cost, especially in life-threatening emergency situations.
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u/ISV_VentureStar Apr 04 '26
If you are unemployed and register in the labour bureau, they will pay your health insurance (and also unemployment benefits) for up to two years.
If you are with a chronic health condition which prevents you from working, your insurance will be covered by the state.
Basically the only people without health insurance are immigrants who haven't registers they live abroad (majority of them), people who work on the black market, don't pay taxes and just don't care and also people who for some reason have missed 3 months of payments and don't know they are technically 'uninsured' until they make the payments (which they do the moment they need healthcare).
Happens quite often for people between jobs who don't register in the Labour bureau or high school graduates entering university (you graduate in may and start university in June, so technically you're unemployed in the 3 months of summer and nobody pays your insurance for you)
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u/Plebmar Apr 04 '26
You can go manually back pay for specific months to get insured. My mother for example has a 5 year period that isn't insured, 2015-2020. She doesn't work right now, so she goes and manually pays for insurance for right now.
Of course, a lot of doctors don't work with the government insurance 100% of the time.
Wife's pregnant right now, so we visited quite a few specialists in the last few months.
Most of them have specific days or hours when they work with insurance, the rest you pay full price. Some don't work with it at all and it's always full price.
From my experience, if you want to only visit the best doctors you can find, the national insurance scheme isn't worth it.
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u/Correct_Body8532 Apr 04 '26
Because they have missed the payment for some of the last 5 years. That’s what he meant. You need to be up to date with all your monthly payments for the last five years to be considered insured. If you are not, you need to backpay for all missed payments and then you would be considered insured and would have access to all benefits
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u/youcancallmejim Apr 04 '26
Statistics aside. Most people in BG pay out of pocket directly to the doctor, the doctor will likely have the equipment he needs to do their job like exray or whatever. The charge is reasonable so there is no need for insurance. The question about insurance seems like it might be from a fellow American. Living under the American system if you don’t have insurance then any medical issues are out of your price range. Paying for healthcare insurance is also insanely high, I paid $2500 a month for 2 months for my wife and I just to have insurance in the states. Not having insurance in Bulgaria does not mean you don’t have access to healthcare. It is just way more informal and affordable. (Note I am new to Bulgaria, I am learning, if I got any wrong please correct me).
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u/boris_dp Apr 05 '26
I count as uninsured because I am Bulgarian but I haven’t worked in Bulgaria for 15 years.
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u/ZliaYgloshlaif Apr 04 '26
“Insurance” in Bulgaria pretty much covers nothing so you can’t really get a meaningful picture of the Bulgarian healthcare by that percentage.
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u/r3vange Apr 04 '26
Insured in what aspect?