New law to provide health insurance for all

TIRANA, Jan. 10 – Government has approved a new draft law which it says will cover all the population with compulsory health insurance. The current Health Insurance Institute will be turned into the National Fund for Health Insurance in an effort to ensure better administration, transparency and reliability for people who pay contributions.
“The new health insurance scheme aims at covering the whole population in order to benefit health services financed both by the public and private sectors,” says Health Minister Petrit Vasili.
Both economically active and inactive population will be covered under the new law. The inactive will have their compulsory health insurance paid by the state budget.
Meanwhile, the health insurance amount for employees in the public or private sector will remain unchanged at 3.4 percent of the monthly wage, with employers and employees paying 1.7 percent each.
Describing the draft as a key element to the health reform, minister Vasili said the new changes would further improve the financing of healthcare and increase service quality.
The novelty of this draft is that the new Health Insurance Fund will draft packages for institutions providing healthcare with the necessary medical, economic and social criteria such as the service impact on longevity, cost effectiveness, and the population’s ability to pay.
The law also foresees establishing a national register of health insurance payers and offer free of charge treatment for medical emergencies.
“This draft law builds a reporting system which clearly determines the number of economically inactive population and clearly determines the amount of contribution the state has to pay,” said Vasili, convinced that the new law will also eliminate bribery in the health system, perceived by the population as the most corrupt.