site.btaSupervisory Board of National Health Insurance Fund Approves Fund's Draft Budget for 2015

104 ECONOMY-HEALTH FUND-2015 DRAFT BUDGET

Supervisory Board of National Health Insurance Fund
Approves Fund's Draft Budget for
2015

Sofia, November 27 (BTA) - The Supervisory Board of the National
Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) Thursday approved the Fund's draft
budget for 2015 in a five to one vote with two abstentions,
Chairman of the Supervisory Board Kiril Ananiev said. The budget
totals 3,155,534,000 leva. Ananaiev said that this is the first
budget in the past five years based on actually expended money
in the preceding year.

Ananiev offered assurances that the NHIF will not end the year
in over-spending. The members of the NHIF Supervisory Board
discussed measures put forward by the Health Minister intended
to increase the efficiency of expenditures by revising some
ordinances. The draft budget for 2015 envisages that hospitals
opening after January 1, 2015 which want to be funded by the
NHIF will start to receive financing as of 2016.

In a statement on Wednesday, general practitioners demanded that
primary out-of-hospital care expenditures are increased to 8
per cent of NHIF's overall health expenditures from the current
7.1 per cent.

In 2008, 15 EU states allocated 25-30 per cent of their
healthcare expenditures for primary out-of-hospital care. PK, LY
/PP, ZH/