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Bulgaria: Health

Overview

Whether you’re living in Bulgaria or just visiting, it’s extremely risky not to have health insurance for yourself and your family; if you’re uninsured or under-insured, you could be faced with some very high medical bills. If you’re working in Bulgaria and qualify for state health benefits, you may still want to have private insurance, owing to the limitations of the state health service.

Visitors

If you have a holiday home and come to Bulgaria as a visitor (i.e. for less than 90 days at a time and less than 183 days in any year), you should check whether you qualify for free or subsidised health treatment in Bulgaria as part of a reciprocal health agreement between your home country and Bulgaria. If you don’t, you must choose between a private international health insurance policy, and holiday/travel insurance.

Reciprocal Health Agreements

Citizens of the UK are entitled to free medical, dental and hospital treatment in Bulgaria, under a reciprocal healthcare agreement between the two countries. To access healthcare, you will need a UK passport and NHS card. UK citizens must pay for medicines, however. Most other countries don’t have reciprocal health agreements, so if you aren’t covered by Bulgarian social security you must have private health insurance or a holiday/travel policy that covers you in Bulgaria.

The UK Department of Health warns that the state healthcare sector in Bulgaria is severely limited and strongly recommends that visitors to Bulgaria have private medical insurance.

Residents

If you plan to take up residence in Bulgaria and will be contributing to Bulgarian social security (called ‘NOI’) – e.g. if you will be working in Bulgaria – you and your family will be entitled to free or subsidised medical and dental treatment from the Bulgarian state system. Once you have a residence permit you will pay contributions through the NOI to the Bulgarian state health system, currently around 15 lev per month. This entitles you to free treatment from a GP, free referrals to a specialist, and medicines at reduced prices or free.

Residents who don’t contribute to social security (e.g. retirees) and aren’t covered by a reciprocal agreement should take out a private international health insurance policy.

One way to insure yourself for this interim period is to take out a holiday/travel insurance policy. If you already have private health insurance, it’s better to extend your present health insurance policy to provide international cover (which is usually possible) than to take out a new policy. This is particularly important if you have an existing health problem that won’t be covered by a new policy.

Private Health Insurance

If you already have private health insurance in another country, it may be possible to extend it to cover you in Bulgaria. Bear in mind, however, that in some countries (e.g. the UK) insurance companies may automatically cancel your insurance policies without telling you if you inform them that you’re moving abroad permanently!

If you don’t have an international policy, shop around for the one that best suits your requirements. Most international insurance companies offer health policies for different areas, e.g. Europe, worldwide excluding North America, and worldwide including North America. Most companies offer different levels of cover, e.g. basic, standard and comprehensive. There’s always an annual limit on medical costs and some companies also limit the charges for specific treatment or care such as specialists’ fees, operations and hospital accommodation.

More pages

Page 1: Overview
Page 2: © Survival Books Limited 2006

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