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| An employee of the Albanian vaccination campaign administering an AstraZeneca vaccine in Tirana on March 13, 2021 |
Official show that during the year of the pandemic, public sector spending on health increased by only 4%. In contrast, Albanians increased spending on private health care, paying millions of euros just for COVID-19 diagnostics.
An employee of the Albanian vaccination campaign administering an AstraZeneca vaccine in Tirana on March 13, 2021
The laboratories that first provided the COVID-19 assays in Albania were the largest financial beneficiaries of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, which marked a significant increase of the Albanians spending on private health care and an anemic increase in public sector spending.
The financial data of the main companies in the private health services sector as well as the data of the Compulsory Health Insurance Fund, point out the contrast between the increase of citizens' expenditures in the private sector and the increase of only 4% of the financing for the public health sector.
The data analyzed by BIRN are partial, as only 11 commercial entities were taken into account in the calculation, mainly private hospitals as well as licensed laboratories for conducting COVID-19 testing.
Citizens' expenses for medicines purchased without reimbursement or in semi-illegality or payments for home health care cannot be measured. Likewise, the cost of treatment abroad can only be guessed at.