The VZP health insurance company said that until yesterday, 152,692 refugees from Ukraine have registered to the public health insurance in Czechia and out of these people, 68,125 are children, while women make up 80 percent of the adult insured, according to VZP CEO Zdenek Kabatek.
“The situation is manageable and the availability of healthcare for Czech insured is not at risk,” Kabatek said.
After the application is successfully processed, refugees receive a card that entitles its holder to the same healthcare that the publicly insured Czechs. In other words, there is no need for the refugees to have commercial health insurance. The validity of health insurance corresponds to the validity of the visa that is usually one year. If refugees do not work in the Czech Republic, the state will pay the insurance for them.
Last week, the Czech lower house approved a piece of legislation under which refugees will have free healthcare including medicines 30 days before they receive the tolerance visa, according to head of the VZP administrative board Tom Philipp (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL).
As a result, healthcare providers do not have to worry that they would not be paid for the care provided to Ukrainians. Ukrainian children born in the Czech Republic will be entitled to 60-day health insurance. Philipp said, it was assumed that within this period, parents will get the visa for their child and thus their offspring will be still insured.
Besides healthcare for refugees, another issue that is being solved is the even distribution of burden on health facilities, Kabatek said, adding that hospitals should secure mainly primary care.
“We want to find such a solution that will not reduce the access of insured Czech clients to health services,” Kabatek stressed.
“Within the limits of its reserve, the VZP is ready to cover all costs related to healthcare for Ukrainian refugees,” he added. If the costs are similar to those of Czech people, he estimated the expenditures at one to CZK 1.5 billion a year per 100,000 refugees.
Czech Association of General Practitioners head Petr Sonka said some Ukrainian refugees will probably begin to be treated chronic diseases like diabetes or high blood pressure as their treatment is less developed in Ukraine than in Czechia. “We must get prepared that these diseases will be revealed in the entry medical checks more often. Not to mention COVID-19 as the vaccination rate is very low in Ukraine,” Sonka said.
More than 75 percent of adults are vaccinated against the novel coronavirus in Czechia, while in Ukraine it is only roughly one third of adults. Ukrainian refugees who are granted special visas have the right to be vaccinated for free in the public health insurance system.
Pediatrician and Vaccinology Society committee member Hana Cabrnochova said COVID-19 is likely to reappear in the autumn and the question is what variant will come, how contagious it will be and how serious troubles it will cause.
Czech Medical Society of Purkyne head Pavel Dlouhy said people coming from Ukraine may also suffer from infectious, respiration or diarrhoeal diseases that they caught on their way to Czechia or during their stay in the war territory.
Source: VZP and CTK
