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Population Insurance Coverage For A Core Set Of Healthcare Services, 2019 (%):
Public Coverage: 94%; Primary Private Health Coverage: %; Total: 94%

“Population coverage for health care is defined here as the share of the population eligible for a core set of health care services – whether through public programmes or primary private health insurance. The set of services is countryspecific but usually includes consultations with doctors, tests and examinations, and hospital care. Public coverage includes both national health systems and social health insurance. On national health systems, most of the financing comes from general taxation, whereas in social health insurance systems, financing typically comes from a combination of payroll contributions and taxation. In both, financing is linked to ability to pay. Primary private health insurance refers to insurance coverage for a core set of services, and can be voluntary or mandatory by law (for some or all of the population). Additional private health insurance is always voluntary. Voluntary private insurance premiums are generally not income‑related, although the purchase of private coverage may be subsidised by the government.”

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

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“The Hungarian constitution states that all Hungarian citizens have the right to access care. Citizens and foreigners working in the country are required to join the national social health insurance (SHI) system: opting out is not permitted. SHI coverage is therefore high but not universal: around 5 % of the population have unclarified SHI status, which includes citizens working abroad and people without a permanent address.

“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).”

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“In Hungary, 95 % of the population are covered by the country’s SHI system. The remaining 5 % predominantly consist of citizens living abroad who have access to health care within their country of residence and those living in Hungary without a permanent address (see Section 4). In addition, recent changes to the SHI payment system risk increasing the number of people without insurance. 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.

“Despite not having achieved universal health care coverage, reported levels of unmet medical needs are low in Hungary: just 1 % of the population reported unmet medical needs in 2019 compared to 1.7 % across the EU as a whole (Figure 13). As in other EU countries, reported levels of unmet medical needs in Hungary are higher among low-income groups. Despite low levels of unmet needs, Hungary reports relatively high levels of OOP payments for certain services.”

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World 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.

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Page last updated May 25, 2023 by Doug McVay, Editor.