Authorities in Sarajevo Canton are robbing citizens because they are too slow to adopt the initiative to abolish co-payments for healthcare services!

By: A. Čorbo-Zećo

We witness that authorities are not in a hurry when it comes to citizens' interests in the attempt to abolish personal contributions of insured persons for healthcare services and treatment costs in Sarajevo Canton.

The Health Insurance Fund of Sarajevo Canton, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health of Sarajevo Canton, initiated the abolition of the Decision on personal contributions of insured persons to the costs of using healthcare services and bearing treatment costs in Sarajevo Canton back in October 2023.

It was only in January 2024 that the Government forwarded the initiative to the KS Assembly to abolish all citizen co-payments for treatment costs and healthcare services, and the KS Assembly will consider this decision tomorrow, March 14. In the meantime, citizens are paying regularly.

Citizens are paying co-payments for services

Due to the excessively slow procedure, which does not concern the authorities, citizens are still paying co-payments, five months after the first initiatives to adopt this decision. And it is unclear why everything is going so slowly in Sarajevo Canton, where there is no Milorad Dodik or Dragan Čović, so they cannot agree.

Even the KS Ministry of Finance gave the green light for this initiative, but time has simply worked for the authorities, not the citizens of Sarajevo.

Even the Fund itself stated that they would not actually feel the deficit of around 800,000 KM (this is how much was collected through these payments).

Citizens have been paying co-payments since 2000, at the request of the KS HIF, and there have been no previous attempts to suspend these charges for citizens.

The KS HIF did not specify to Patria why this process is taking so long, emphasizing that this is truly a revolutionary matter, as for the first time in Sarajevo Canton after 26 years, citizens will no longer have to pay the costs they have paid for over 50 services for years, and queues at clinic cash desks will become a thing of the past.

“By adopting this proposal from the Health Insurance Fund of Sarajevo Canton, the Fund will bear the co-payment costs instead of the citizens of Sarajevo Canton. This is another step towards enabling higher quality healthcare for insured persons,” added the KS HIF.

The institution says they have expected a decision from the Sarajevo Canton Assembly earlier and that they continue to work in the interest of the insured.

“With the support of this revolutionary proposal, we expect a significant improvement in access to healthcare for the citizens of Sarajevo Canton, with a reduction in the financial burden they have carried for years,” they stated for NAP from the KS HIF.

Citizens will be exempt from paying for all diagnostic services, including magnetic resonance imaging, CT scans, X-rays, angiography, irigography, electromyography, electroencephalography, and many others.

It is also planned that patients will no longer pay for clinical examinations, treatments, analyses, check-ups, as well as procedures for which insured persons pay up to 200 KM.