Advice on Medical Insurance in Bulgaria

I wish I could help you but I don't have a medical insurance in BG that I like. When I was looking for insurance, I found all of the private insurance plans to be quite expensive when compared to paying out of pocket for medical care. So that would be my only recommendation- to really make sure that your insurance will be worthwhile, because most plans I came across were simply not. To give you some ideas- x-rays range from 7lv to 20lv, a blood draw and analysis was never more than 20lv for me, and when I stayed at a private hospital with a private room and my husband sleeping in with me it was 70lv a night. So in general medical care is quite affordable.

Of course I would never actually urge someone to forgo insurance because there are times when it is necessary. I just have not found a private plan in Bulgaria to be worthwhile.

I will also say that when you can get onto the Bulgarian national insurance to do so. It is quite comprehensive (That is when you get your permanent residence card, so between 3-5 years depending on what your visa is for).

Thank you a lot for your answer! Your contribution is very helpful!

Hi there,

Strange you found no medical insurance providers. Check these ones:

uniqa.bg
https://www.uniqa.bg/za-teb/zdrave-i-zh … okoystvie/

generali.bg
http://www.generali.bg/zastrahovane/pro … i-klienti/

groupama.bg
https://www.groupama.bg/bg/individual-i … foreigners

bulins.com
http://www.bulins.com/zastrahovki/medit … lgariya_52

Hello Kristian, thank you for answering! As far as I understand all of the insurances that you have linked to (excluding uniqa) are obligatory insurances that cover foreigners in Bulgaria only in emergencies or life threatening circumstances.
We need a larger cover including:  hospitalisation. Lets say the doctor decides that I need to be operated for a non life threatening reason, or I get cancer, then non of the insurances above will cover me.
As for uniqa I tried to call them in 4 different languages, and it seems they speak Bulgarian only.

Try someone like Cigna - expensive but worldwide - I do not know if the premiums are cheaper if restricted to BG only. My cover is worldwide except the US.

Actually none of the listed insurance options is obligatory. Call all of these and negotiate the best terms you need. They all have different insurance packages and different cover.

In addition, there are at least 5-6 other options. You can google "медицинска застраховка България" and check teh results.

UNIQA does not speak English ? That's funny, but probably the reality. Try writing an e-mail to them, or even translating it in Bulgarian.

Hello - Thanks for the links -- The Uniqa link was to a site that is only in Bulgarian. I'm not yet fluent enough to read it. Does anyone have a link to a page for Uniqa in English? There did not seem to be an option on the page to switch to English, as some pages have. Thanks for any help.