site.btaParliamentary Budget, Health Committees Adopt National Health Insurance Fund Budget Bill on First Reading

The 2025 National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) Budget Bill was adopted on first reading by the parliamentary Budget and Finance Committee and Health Committee on Wednesday. The two committees and the Labour and Social Policy Committee held a joint sitting to review the bills on the state budget, the NHIF budget, and the public social insurance budget for this year.

The 2025 NHIF Budget Bill envisages BGN 9.474 billion in revenues and transfers. Health insurance revenues amount to BGN 9.256 billion, of which BGN 5.746 billion are revenues from health insurance contributions and BGN 3.509 billion are transfers for health insurance. 

Total expenditures amount to BGN 9.474 billion.

Revenues and expenditures under the bill are BGN 1.306 billion more compared to last year's, or up by 16.0%. 

The funds for health insurance payments amount to BGN 8.873 billion, an increase of BGN 1.242 billion compared to 2024, or a 16.3% increase.

In 2025, it is envisaged that the Ministry of Health will provide a monthly transfer to the NHIF budget in a total annual amount of BGN 191.1 million, to pay for activities outside the scope of compulsory health insurance.

Presenting the 2025 NHIF Budget Bill, NHIF Governor Stanimir Mihaylov said it has been drafted in line with the parameters and assumptions under which the general framework of the 2025 budget has been developed.

During the discussion, commenting on the relative weight between outpatient and inpatient funds in the draft NHIF budget, he pointed out that the planned growth for outpatient care is just over 16%. The same is currently the case for hospital care, but if the BGN 146 million envisaged for the payment of activity reported in 2024 gets subtracted, the relative growth of funds in the draft budget for 2025 for hospital care becomes about 15%, Mihaylov said. "I understand the policy not only as a pledge of funds, but also as many other actions, and within one year it would be very difficult to achieve any result just by mechanically moving funds from one line to another," he said.

"In this draft budget, we are continuing the successful policies that were set out in the 2024 budget. These are both in terms of more preventive care screenings and in terms of incentivizing practices that operate in hard-to-reach, remote areas, including for pharmacies, and there we have found that if there is no increase somewhere, at least there is no outflow," Mihaylov explained. "Because in terms of general practitioners in 2024, some 80 practices have closed down and about 60 new ones have opened. There is a negative trend, and I very much hope that with the money that was given for co-payments in such areas, this negative trend has been reversed," he said.

Regarding pharmacies, Mihaylov said that many more have been unveiled thanks to the resources being allocated, including pharmacies open 24/7, and there are ever fewer regional cities without such pharmacies. All of these are results from these policies but we cannot expect huge numbers for one year, he commented.