Population Insurance Coverage For A Core Set Of Healthcare Services (%) (2019):
Public Coverage: 94.0%; Primary Private Health Coverage: 0%; Total: 94.0%

Note: “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 country-specific 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. 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.”)”

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

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 August 8, 2022.

Life Expectancy at Birth (2020): 76.4
Maternal Mortality Ratio (per 100,000 live births) (2017): 12
Neonatal Mortality Rate (per 1,000 live births) (2020): 2
Probability of Dying from any of Cardiovascular Disease, Cancer, Diabetes, Chronic Respiratory Diseases Between Age 30 and Exact Age 70 (%) (2019): 22.1%

Source: World health statistics 2022: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development
goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2022. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

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.

“Life expectancy in Hungary increased fairly steadily before the COVID-19 pandemic, yet it remains almost five years below the EU average. Between 2019 and 2020, life expectancy fell temporarily by nearly 10 months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a reduction similar to the EU average. To maintain care continuity throughout the pandemic, new regulations on telehealth were introduced; nevertheless, levels of unmet medical needs rose. In response to persistent workforce shortages, in 2020, the government announced a new public sector employment contract, including a 120% pay increase for doctors by 2023.”

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.

“A single health insurance fund provides health care coverage for nearly all residents. The fund is administered by the National Institute of Health Insurance Fund Management (NEAK), which has operated under the direct control of the Ministry of Human Capacities since 2017. The Ministry has exclusive power for setting strategic direction, controlling financing, determining the benefits package and issuing and enforcing regulations. In addition to health, the Ministry is responsible for overseeing culture, education, social affairs and sport.

“Until the end of 2020, the Ministry of Human Capacities administered the health care system through the National Healthcare Service Centre. Late in 2020, the Centre was absorbed by the newly established National Directorate-General for Hospitals under the Ministry of the Interior. Its responsibilities include monitoring the public health care system, implementing strategic government decisions, monitoring hospital operations and contributing to the development of a new national health management system. As part of this change, local county hospitals are responsible for planning and managing inpatient care at the county level, under the supervision of National Directorate-General for Hospitals.”

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 recent years, Hungary has seen an increase in the rate of health expenditure growth: in 2013-19, the average annual growth rate in health spending per capita was 2.9 % compared to negative growth of -0.5 % in 2008-13.

“Despite this recent growth, health expenditure per capita is less than half the EU average after adjusting for differences in purchasing power (Figure 8). Health spending as a proportion of GDP is also relatively low, at 6.4 % compared to 9.9 % across the EU as a whole. This result may, however, be explained in part by Hungary’s relatively high rate of GDP growth in recent years.

“Government transfers and compulsory contributions from employers and employees account for 68.3 % of all health spending in Hungary, which is lower than the EU average of 79.8 %. Contributions from employers are part of a larger social contribution tax, which also covers the pension fund. The increasing share of direct government transfers into the health insurance fund allowed the government to set its priorities freely and exert greater control over expenditure. This did not resolve the inherit instability of health care system funding, which was characterised by long periods of austerity and short periods of overspending, usually in election years (Szigeti et al., 2019). On the other hand, during the COVID-19 pandemic, this system enabled the government to inject additional funds into the health care system. On 4 April 2020, the government announced a Pandemic Protection Fund of HUF 663 billion (EUR 1.8 billion) to support the health care system. Financing for this fund largely came from budget reallocations from other ministries. The fund covered COVID-19-related costs, including a one-time bonus for health care workers of HUF 500 000 (EUR 1 362).”

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 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).”

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 Feb. 1, 2023 by Doug McVay, Editor.