Health care in Poland

Poland has a one-payer system with the state insurance agency called ZUS. One needs to register with ZUS to get the benefits. If you are employed at a company with more than 20 employees this is done through your employer. If your company has less than 20 employees (which was my case) the procedure is a little bit more complicated. You have to prepare the following documents:

1. A picture like for passport
2. A copy of the National ID card
3. A copy of spouse’s National ID card
4. A copy of marriage certificate
5. Copies of children’s birth certificates
6. Filled in Forms E-22 and E-22a, can be downloaded from ZUS website

Copies 2-5 are stamped by the employer that has to see the originals  to compare. The employer issues one additional document confirming the employment. All this needs to be brought to an appriopriate ZUS office so that it can issue the insurance cards. This takes about two weeks. During that time one can register at a family doctor’s practice and use the services based on the employment document.

So far my experiences with health care in Poland have been positive. I got conjuctivitis (pink eye) one Monday morning. My wife called the doctor’s office at 8 a.m, got an appointment for me at 9. We had chosen a family practitioner in the neigborhood, walking distance from our apartment (we still don’t have our car). I was seen at 9:15, got a prescription and bought the medicines before 10. There was no copayment for the doctor visit, but I had to pay about 50% (I think) for the medicines.

School age children are automatically insured in Poland no matter if the parents have gone through the process described above. My daughter got an ear infection one Saturday before we had a doctor. My wife first tried to find a private doctor (outside of the ZUS system ), but it turned out that the correct thing to do was to call number 555 and find out where in town there is an ENT specialist on duty that day. She got an appointment in about two hours and that was it.

ZUS costs 9% of salary before tax. This is calculated for practically all payments from your employer, including, to my surprise, things like relocation cost reimbursement. With the income tax (no deduction for relocation costs as well) this means that if your employer promises you the reimbursement of the relocation costs it really means that you will get back about 60-70% of what you spend.

The container arrives

So, finally the container arrived, two weeks after the first estimate. It was first processed in Gdynia by the customs, but the real processing took place in Wrocław. We didn’t have to be personally  present at the customs office as it was handled by the DTA customs services agency  and  we just waited for the stuff to arrive at our apartment. It took about four hours in Wrocław to process the shipment, then some three hours to unload it. The only problem with the customs was the wording on our declaration where we stated that the things had been our property for more than six months. They wanted us to correct that so that we also state that we used the stuff for more than six months. My wife provided them with the corrected declaration the next day. I have a fealing that the customs officers just felt obliged to find some problem.

The moving company that served us on this side of the ocean was the Polish branch of ABC Ricard  Worldwide Moving. The truck that brought our container was unable to go through the gate of our apartment complex. I thought this might be a serious problem, but they just parked some 300 meters away and brought the boxes on a small van. An hour later another van with additional two people joined them to speed things up. There was no extra charge for this additional work. I can definitely say that I recommend this company.

I couple minor things went missing in the whole ordeal – my sons soccer ball,  two kids sledges and the table legs. While I didn’t care about the ball and the sledges, the missing table legs were quite annoying. Fortunately two days later the ABC Ricard branch manager called me that they found the legs and will be shipping them overnight. They had been put in some corner of one of the vans and forgotten. We should get them today.