Bulgarians do not know their health insurance rights

“Bulgarians are not familiar with their health insurance rights and women are much more willing to fight for their rights than men,” announced Dr. Stoycho Katsarov from the Centre for Protection of Rights in Healthcare, yesterday.

This conclusion about the ignorance of people was reached after the findings of a poll, conducted among 241 citizens in several Bulgarian towns. Respondents answered most correctly the questions related to the amount patients pay when visiting a doctor, out of 16 basic and three additional questions included in the survey. Over 15% of the polled were convinced that they can receive free medical care even if they have not paid health insurance contributions at all and about 35% of the respondents believed that a pregnant woman who is not insured cannot get free natal care.

More than half of the respondents did not know what is included in dental care paid for by the Health Insurance Fund. Over 99% of the polled gave wrong answers to the question about the number of directions for consultations that a patient can receive from his GP in a year.

Every third person replied that they have rarely been examined in routine medical check-ups and 1.7% did not know whether they had been examined at all.

Some 71.4% of the respondents were not aware of who controls the rights of patients and almost half of them believed that patients' rights in Bulgaria are not protected. Dr. Stoycho Katsarov said that the complaints of patients about the services offered in hospitals had constituted the largest part of complaints submitted to the Centre for Protection of Rights in Healthcare . These were related mainly to cases of mistreatment of patients, the poor quality of medical care, the lack of drugs and refused medical care.

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