A comparison of health insurance in Slovenia and Croatia

Before Croatia and Slovenia became independent in 1991, they had similar health systems. They have generally taken the same reform path since then, but have also travelled in opposite directions on occasions. Of particular relevance here, both countries established quasi-government agencies to administer a new national scheme of compulsory health insurance in 1993. However, Slovenia's compulsory scheme involved much larger copayments, and a parallel voluntary insurance scheme was created mainly to cover them. In 2002, Croatia increased copayments and introduced a voluntary insurance scheme almost identical to that of Slovenia's. To complete the circle, Slovenia has announced it intends to abandon the use of voluntary insurance for copayments, and reduce the level of copayments for its compulsory scheme. This paper describes and compares the two insurance systems, and I argue that there has been considerable success in difficult circumstances. However, the experiences reinforce aspects of design that seem to be generally relevant: the need to make use of consumers' informed opinions, to recognise and then redress a lack of experience of optional approaches among many of those making decisions about health insurance, to define and apply a rigorous evaluation framework that includes estimating peoples total costs for health care, to emphasise the long term, to identify and ensure there is transparency of vested interests, and to use the financial power of the dominant government insurer to encourage and reward improvements in clinical practice.