Low salaries for doctors. The deputy head of the National Health Fund makes the matter clear
This year's financial plan of the National Health Fund amounts to: PLN 220 billion. However, the scale of expenditure on the increases alone may be shocking – they will cost as much as PLN 72 billion.
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Jakub Szulc admitted that although he supports the idea of decent wages in medicine, the way the minimum wage law was introduced was flawed from the very beginning.
The deputy head of the Fund specified failure to indicate the source of financing the wage increase as “original sin”. He recalled a bizarre provision from 2022. – When the Act on the method of determining the minimum wage was adopted in the Sejm, the impact assessment of the regulation included a provision that the financial consequences for the public finance sector for the next 10 years would amount to PLN 0 per year – Szulc pointed out during the panel.
The state budget is a drip for the National Health Fund
The explosion in costs meant that revenues from health insurance premiums were no longer sufficient to cover liabilities. In 2023, the subsidy from the state budget was only PLN 200 million. Currently, these amounts are counted in tens of billions.
In 2024, the subsidy exceeded PLN 15 billion (total PLN 18 billion of non-contributory funds). In 2025, the planned subsidy will increase to PLN 32 billion (total budget support will amount to PLN 42 billion).
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According to the deputy head of the National Health Fund the need to balance the budget by the end of 2026 forces the payer to make difficult decisions and look for savings wherever possible.
New settlement rules: no more full rate for overperformance
The first effects of belt tightening are already visible. Since April, the National Health Fund has introduced changes in the payment of highly specialized diagnostic tests (tomography, resonance imaging, endoscopy) performed above the limits specified in the contracts.
Instead of the current 100 percent, hospitals will receive degressive rates: 60 percent rates for excess endoscopic examinations and 50 percent rates for additional computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.
Priority groups remain excluded from the new, less favorable financing rules: oncology patients with a DiLO card, people taking advantage of colorectal cancer prevention, and children and adolescents up to 18 years of age. For them, access to testing is to remain unchanged.
