Wearing glasses, dentures or hearing aids can be expensive. The Belgian health care reimbursement system does not convince the World Health Organization (WHO). For her, our country has among the highest health care in Western Europe.
Belgians decide to adapt, postpone or even give up certain treatments. This doctor notices every day in consultation that patients fear seeing the costs accumulate: drugs, hospital supplements and late reimbursements by mutual insurance companies.
In Charleroi, this 50-year-old patient should replace her glasses. But faced with the cost, she hesitates. If she buys glasses for a thousand euros, she would only be reimbursed 40 to 50 euros. The optician Antoine Jehaes explains that between 0 and 18 there is a good refund, but this is not the case beyond.
Sccording to 2020 figures, 260,000 households (i.e. one in 20 Belgian households) have difficulty paying exceptional health costs. One of the solutions “would be, for example, to completely abolish the part paid by patients for lower-income households or to better regulate the prices of devices such as glasses or dental implants”, according to Charline Maertens, of the Federal Center for Health Care Expertise.
Other possible solutions put forward by the WHO: l’automatic access to certain special statuses, without administrative paperwork. And the abolition of retroactive reimbursement for all health care services.
The Minister of Health Frank Vandenbroucke specifies that this observation dates from 2020 and that since then many measures have been taken to strengthen the accessibility of care and remove financial obstacles.