A reduction in the health contribution also raises emotions in the ruling coalition, which also showed voting in the Senate.
For adopting the amendment without amendments of the Act on healthcare services financed from public funds and some other actslowering the health premium for entrepreneurs from 2026, 58 senators voted on Wednesday. There were 36 against, three abstained from voting. Among the opposite were the leftist senators (in the Sejm against the change there were PiS, the left and together, and the confederation abstained).
A moment earlier, the Senate rejected the minority application to reject the act in its entirety. PiS senators made an amendment in this matter during the procedure of the Act in the Budget and Public Finance Committee and the Health Committee.
The key is now what President Andrzej Duda will do with the law.
Read also: Health contribution. Check who will gain and who will lose. [WYLICZENIA]
Discussion on the Act on reducing the health premium for entrepreneurs
During the debate at the plenary meeting of the Senate, which preceded the vote, Senator Kazimierz Kleina (Civic Platform) He explained that Money to cover the defect in revenues to the National Health Fund will already be visible in the draft budget for next year.
“I trust in the Ministry of Finance that the matter will be settled in this way” – he said.
Deputy head of this ministry Jarosław Neneman assured senators that The government has planned to cover this loss in expenses for the next years. “In the budget construction for the next years, the change in the reduction of the health premium for entrepreneurs is included,” he said.
He said that at the next government meeting a report on the implementation of the “medium-term budget and struggle plan for 2025-2028” would be accepted, in which “included“There are these funds. He informed that A deficiency at the NFZ ticket office will be covered from budget revenues.
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Senator Waldemar Pawlak (third way) emphasized that the reduction of the premium for entrepreneurs is “Cleaning after a mess introduced in 2022.“, i.e. tax changes resulting from Polish order – a program introduced by the government of Mateusz Morawiecki.
According to Wojciech Konieczny, the leftist's senator and deputy minister of health, The health contribution should not be reducedbecause the current expenditure on health care is insufficient in Poland. “This is a sad day in my opinion” – he said.
Reduced health contribution for entrepreneurs from 2026.
The act adopted by the senators assumes:
- A minimum health contribution of 9 % will be maintained, which will be calculated from 75 percent. minimum wage. If there were no amendments, entrepreneurs would pay a minimum health contribution from 100 percent. minimum wage, which experts warned before;
- Entrepreneurs on a linear PIT and lump sums will not be able to be paid in the tax contribution or deduct from income/income. Today, people on a linear PIT can partially deduct the premium or include in the costs of obtaining, but only up to the limit (in 2025 it is 12.9 thous. zloty). In turn, lump sums can 50 percent deduct from income paid;
- Entrepreneurs settling according to the PIT and PIT linear scale will count the premium in two stages:
– In the first step they will have 9 percent. contributions from 75 percent minimum wage (if the income per month does not exceed 1.5 times the average salary) and
– In the second step they will pay an additional premium of 4.9 percent. from the surplus (increasing from the beginning of the year) over 1.5 times the average salary (if the income exceeds the threshold of 1.5 times the average salary from the fourth quarter of the previous year);
- Entrepreneurs will also count on a lump sum in two stages, but a bit differently:
– In the first step they will pay a fixed premium, which will be 9 percent. from 75 percent minimum remuneration – in the case of entrepreneurs generating income in a given month up to three times the average salary and
– In the second step they will pay an additional premium of 3.5 percent. From the surplus (increasing since the beginning of the year) over three times the average salary – in the case of entrepreneurs whose revenues will exceed the threshold of three times the average salary.
The change is to apply from the beginning of 2026 to cost the state budget PLN 4.6 billion (as long as health revenues are to be reduced).
Read also: Health contribution in the debate. Karol Nawrocki surprised
What about the reduction in the health premium adopted by the parliament will the president do?
The act will now go to the president. Government, with the prime minister Donald Tusk at the forefront, He is afraid that Andrzej Duda will veto a reduction in the health premium.
On Wednesday before noon Prime Minister Donald Tusk announcedthat if the president does it, The prime minister will take steps to return to this topic after the presidential election.
Read also: The Sejm adopted a reduction in the health premium. This is how politicians comment after voting. “Shocking”
