Health insurance

Hey Rickie...

Not sure "it's time", you can keep buying private health insurance as long as you like / can afford it! :-)

My Bulgarian (with British passport + UK pension) friend says that he wouldn't like to use the regular Bulgarian health care anyway, so I think that might be worth investigating what the quality level is like vs UK / France / Germany state healthcare, before you decide not to have any more private insurance.

He is officially retired with a UK S1 form. So if you're entitled to an S1, you need to get that first from the UK. Then there's some bureaucracy involved in registering that with Bulgarian authorities, and getting some kind of card to show you're entitled to free Bulgarian state healthcare.

The same friend says that every time they use it, they get "upsold" to private / semi-private care, for a small extra amount. So I understand they have never used the basic level of care.

Like you, I also paid for private health insurance policy.

If you are working here officially, you will be (or should be) paying some tax and some social security / National Insurance equivalent (NOI, I think). Paying the NOI entitles you to state healthcare.

If you're just chillin' in BG, or working "in the black"... then you can choose to make monthly NOI contributions anyway. You can choose to classify yourself as either "self-employed", or "unemployed". I can't remember the exact amounts... maybe 20 leva unemployed, 150 leva self-employed. This involves registering for NOI, and then making your regular monthly payments.

Once you're doing this you can (a) get some regular (not sure it's free, but it's not very expensive) BG healthcare, and (b) you can ask for a BG EHIC card to cover you when you travel elsewhere in EU.

here's a useful link:
https://www.justlanded.com/english/Bulg … -Insurance

And NOI is here (in Bulgarian, but Google Chrome will help you out):
[link moderated]/

Cheers!