Annual household out-of-pocket payment, current USD per capita (2019): $299

Source: Global Health Expenditure Database. Health expenditure series. Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed Dec. 16, 2021.

Out-of-Pocket Spending as Share of Final Household Consumption (%) (2019): 3.8%

Source: OECD (2021), Health at a Glance 2021: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ae3016b9-en.

“OOP [Out-Of-Pocket] expenses comprise over a quarter of all health care spending – a share larger than the average for the EU as a whole (Figure 15). The majority of OOP spending goes on outpatient medical care and outpatient pharmaceuticals. The former reflects the high usage of private health care services because of long waiting times in the public sector, while the latter is a result of high co-payment rates.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2021), Hungary: Country Health Profile 2021, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

“The benefits package covered by the health insurance fund is decided at the central level through a positive list for pharmaceuticals and a negative list for medical procedures. While most hospital spending is publicly funded, public coverage for outpatient (ambulatory) medical care, outpatient pharmaceuticals, medical devices and dental care is much narrower. This partly explains relatively high levels of out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure for these items (see Section 5.2).”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2021), Hungary: Country Health Profile 2021, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

“In 2019, the government introduced the Act on Entitlements to Social Security Benefits and on Funding These Services. Under the Act, non-insured patients must pay for treatment out of pocket or forgo care, with the exception of emergency care. The Act risks increasing the number of uninsured individuals, since non-insured patients previously paid the insurance fee after receiving treatment and therefore subsequently received coverage.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2021), Hungary: Country Health Profile 2021, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated August 27, 2022 by Doug McVay, Editor.