Over the last three years the number of Croatians carrying the state-issued primary health care card fell by 157,000, while in the same period health care spending increased by 692 million kuna (€93.4 million), with analysts saying that both trends serve to illustrate how unviable the system is.

The number of people with state-provided health insurance continues to fall, while health care costs continue to rise, confirming predictions which blame a number of factors for both trends, including ageing population, emigration, the dwindling number of working Croatians funding the health care system, which combined with increasing costs due to longer life expectancy and increasingly expensive costs of treatments and medicines.

On March 1, the state health care fund (HZZO) covered 4.168 million registered people, down by 76,000 in only two months since January 1, reported Poslovni Dnevnik daily on Monday.

“The fall in the number of people sovered by HZZO was caused primarily by increasing emigration over the past few years, as well as negative population growth. On the other hand, the climbing cost of health care is influenced by the increasingly ageing population, which results in an increased need for more health services. Another important cause of higher costs is the continuous increase of medical technology like medicines and various medical devices or treatment methods. These have been estimated to grow by 5-8 percent per year globally,” said Drazen Jurkovic, head of the Croatian Association of Health Care Employers.

(€1 = 7.41 kuna)

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