The Croatian government on Thursday adopted a report on the work of the Croatian Health Insurance Institute (HZZO) in 2020, which shows a significant drop in revenue from health insurance contributions.

The epidemiological restrictions introduced in 2020 to help curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic resulted in a drop in economic activity and significant changes in the structure of the HZZO revenue, Health Minister Vili Beros said.

“The share of revenue from health insurance contributions dropped from 81.88% to 74.21% while the share of revenue from budget allocations rose from 9.59% to 13.29% due to additional allocations to hospitals and the HZZO for the payment of due obligations to pharmacies and increased costs caused by COVID-19,” said Beros.

In the revenue structure, new revenue is an interest-free loan of 1.46 billion kuna approved to the HZZO by the Finance Ministry as compensation for job-keeping measures which resulted in a drop in revenue from health insurance contributions.

“The work in 2020 was more difficult due to the extraordinary circumstances that had an impact on the HZZO’s total and due obligations. On 31 December, the HZZO’s total obligations amounted to 4.177 billion kuna, of which 657 million kuna was due for payment,” the minister said.

In the structure of due obligations, those for prescription drugs were the highest (HRK 318 million), followed by incapacity benefits for budget users (192 million kuna).

The report also shows a smaller drop in the number of insurees, with 4,161,628 registered insurees, 27,030 fewer than in the same period of 2019.

The average number of active insurees was down by 1.51% (or 24,119 people), to 1,575,192 workers.

The government today also decided to allocate 40 million kuna to Bosnia and Herzegovina, to be paid in instalments to the Mostar University Hospital and to be used to cover the cost of the fight against COVID-19.