Medical Care for Foreigners in Ukraine: Who Pays?

The default: you pay, up front

Ukraine's state health system covers residents. A visiting foreign national is a paying patient — in state hospitals and private clinics alike. Emergency stabilisation will not be withheld from someone in critical condition, but everything around it is billed: diagnostics, the ward, medication, the surgeon, the ambulance transfer.

Two practical consequences follow. First, payment is usually requested before or during treatment rather than invoiced afterwards. Second, pharmacies in Ukraine are separate businesses from hospitals, so prescribed medication is frequently a second payment you make yourself at a counter down the street.

Cashless treatment versus reimbursement

This is the distinction that decides how your trip goes after something happens, and most travellers only learn it while holding a bill.

Cashless. You call the assistance number on your certificate first. The assistance company identifies a clinic, confirms cover and guarantees payment to the hospital directly. You show up as a patient whose bill is already settled between two companies. You pay nothing and sign nothing beyond consent forms.

Reimbursement. You pay yourself, collect documents, submit a claim and wait. Under this contract you have 30 calendar days from the date you sought care to send the insurer a complete set: the claim form, your ID, a medical report with the diagnosis, an itemised invoice, fiscal receipts and any prescriptions. The insurer then decides within 15 working days of holding the last required document, and pays in hryvnia to the account you name.

Both routes end with the bill covered. Only one of them requires you to have the money available in a foreign country on the day.

What the sum insured actually means

The policy pays up to a ceiling, set in hryvnia: 100,000 UAH on the Standard plan, 1,575,000 UAH on Extended. Euro figures quoted on this site are conversions and drift with the exchange rate; the contract number is the hryvnia one, and claims are paid in hryvnia.

The difference between those two figures is not cosmetic. An outpatient visit, a course of antibiotics or a night under observation sits comfortably inside the lower limit. Surgery, an intensive-care stay, or a medical evacuation with a doctor on board does not — those are the scenarios where a fifteenfold difference in ceiling stops being an abstraction.

One detail worth knowing: each payout reduces the remaining sum insured for the rest of the policy term. The limit is per person for the whole period, not per incident.

There is no deductible

Unusually for travel cover, this contract applies no franchise: the insurer pays from the first hryvnia. There is no first slice of the bill left with you, which matters most for small claims — the category where a €50 or €100 excess often means the traveller simply never bothers to claim.

What the policy will not pay for

It is emergency cover, so the gaps are predictable but worth naming:

• Dental care — excluded outright. Budget separately for it on longer stays.
• Sports and physical exercise — injuries sustained during any sport are excluded, including recreational skiing and a game of football.
• Pre-existing conditions — flare-ups of something treated or medicated in the six months before the trip, unless the flare-up threatens life or permanent disability.
• Planned and routine care — check-ups, second opinions, vaccinations, physiotherapy, rehabilitation.
• Chronic and specified conditions — diabetes, oncology, tuberculosis and several others are limited to emergency care, capped at five days per event.

The complete list, with the insurer's own wording linked, is on the insurance conditions page.

The practical checklist

1. Save the assistance number from your certificate into your phone before you travel, not after.
2. Call it first, before agreeing to treatment — this is what converts a bill into a cashless case.
3. If you do pay yourself, keep every fiscal receipt. A card statement is not a receipt, and a receipt without itemised services usually needs a second sales receipt alongside it.
4. Ask the clinic for a medical report with the diagnosis in writing before you leave.
5. Submit within 30 days of seeking care. The deadline runs from the treatment date, not from when you get home.

Sort cover before the trip, not from a waiting room →