Some families declare their place of residence in Lithuania in order to access certain medicines reimbursed by the Lithuanian state but not covered in Latvia, former head of the National Health Service (NVD) and former chairman of the board of Riga East University Hospital Edgars Labsvirs has said.
At the same time, Latvian nationals officially registered abroad spent 2,228,615 euros in the first nine months of last year on state-funded treatment in Latvia, with the annual figure reaching nearly 3 million euros, according to calculations by the Ministry of Health.
Labsvirs said that 3 million euros was a relatively small amount and should not be the main focus, since there were much more fundamental and financially demanding problems.
National Health Service data show that 2.2 million people in Latvia are eligible for state-funded healthcare services.
Among them are about 800,000 employees who contribute 1% of their social insurance contributions to healthcare, another 800,000 socially protected persons, around 150,000 residents working under special tax regimes who do not make the 1% health contribution and about 50,000 unemployed individuals.
The group also includes approximately 70,000 Ukrainian civilians residing in Latvia, some 214,000 Latvian citizens declared abroad, and around 90,000 citizens of the European Union, European Economic Area, Switzerland and third countries.
Average state-funded healthcare expenditure per resident in 2025 is 945 euros in Latvia, compared to 1,211 euros in Lithuania and 1,685 euros in Estonia. (BNN)