Last year, the health fund allocated a good one billion euros for medicines, or almost 18 percent of all expenses, which is a tenth more than the year before. The large increase in the cost of medicines is a pan-European problem, which the authorities are trying to control by acting together. It appears that the new rules related to sick leave have already had an impact on the expenditures of ZZZS, and even more so on employers, since in the first three months of this year, compared to the same period last year, absenteeism decreased by almost a fifth.
Last year, the expenses of the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia amounted to approximately 5.85 billion euros and were as much as three billion higher than in the pre-covid 2019 year. Most of this increase, as much as two thirds, was due to the increase in the price of health services, and 21 percent of the increase was represented by medicines, medical devices and vaccines, ZZZS presented at the development forum Daniela Dimićhead of the area of finance and accounting in ZZZS. In nominal terms, expenditures on medicines jumped by as much as 150 percent during this period.
