A parliamentary emergency subcommittee has approved a draft of changes to health premiums to take effect on January 1, 2026. MPs were not persuaded by arguments about the critically difficult financial situation of the National Health Fund and the gap between the payer's revenues and costs, which runs into hundreds of billions over the next four years. The bill will now go before the Health Committee and the Public Finance Committee.
Health premium from 2026: The parliamentary subcommittee approved the draft despite concerns
Published Feb. 21, 2025 08:00
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The purpose of the amendment is to simplify the system of contributions and lower them for entrepreneurs, especially the smallest ones. Businesses are to pay low, flat-rate health premiums - although the solution is not as favorable as the one in place before the Polish Deal, entrepreneurs, relative to those working under employment contracts, will undoubtedly be favored. And the NFZ budget will lose PLN 6 billion a year. This money is supposed to be compensated, but there are doubts as to whether this will actually happen. With Poland under the excessive deficit procedure - and the NFZ budget about to be closely tied to the rest of the components of public finances in terms of deficit calculations and a rigid spending rule - it may be that health will lose out to other necessary public expenditures, is one of the conclusions that can be drawn from the report on the financial situation in health presented on Wednesday.
The report's conclusions were brought to MPs during Wednesday's session by one of the authors, Wojciech Wisniewski, calling for the abandonment of the procedure of the project, which will not be unaffected by the size of the gap. However, most deputies did not share the concerns, and both Wisniewski's appeal and Marcelina Zawisza's (Together) formal motion to reject the project failed to find a majority. The reason? Politics - lowering the health premium was one of the election promises of the ruling coalition (KO and Third Way clubs)
- I don't even have words for how damaging this is if this law goes into effect. It's already difficult for Polish patients who already have procedures canceled to get to a specialist, and this is a matter of outlays. For the last eight years you have been saying this constantly, at every Health Committee, that outlays for health care must be higher, not lower. At this point, you want to cut revenues to the NFZ, it's really absurd which way this is going," commented Marcelina Zawisza, recalling that health outlays are indeed increasing, but by exactly the amount provided for by the Law and Justice Party's 7 percent of GDP health law, which the current ruling party, while remaining in opposition, has totally criticized.
