Healthcare fee coverage by regional governments to be cut by end of month

Regions throughout the country will no longer cover mandatory healthcare fees for patients visiting regional hospitals and pharmacies, Pardubice’s Social Democrat governor Radko Martínek has said. He made the announcement on Friday, saying that the plan would only remain in place until the end of June. The coverage, he stressed, no longer made sense in view of the recent election results. The Social Democrats, long opposed to healthcare fees, were hoping to abolish them outright had they won a strong mandate last weekend. This week, coverage by regional governments was labelled “discriminatory” by the European Commission, which said that either all patients in the country should be covered – or none. Healthcare fees of 30 crowns at the doctor’s and for individual prescriptions, as well as higher amounts for emergency ward visits and hospital stays, were first introduced by Mirek Topolánek’s government in 2008.

Author: Jan Velinger