The National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (NIHDI) is a federal public body of social security in

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

. Under the authority of the Belgian federal minister of Social Affairs and Public Health, it is responsible for administering the country's compulsory national schemes for

health insurance Health insurance or medical insurance (also known as medical aid in South Africa) is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance, risk is shared among m ...

and

disability benefits Disability benefits are funds provided from public or private sources to a person who is ill or who has a disability. United Kingdom In the United Kingdom disability benefits are covered by Department for Work and Pensions. There are numerous be ...

, and manages a compensation fund for medical accidents.

Organisation

The institute was founded by the law of August 9, 1963 establishing and organizing a scheme for compulsory insurance for medical treatment and benefits, which came into force on January 1, 1964. The law of 1963 has since been replaced by the law of July 14, 1994 regarding the compulsory insurance for medical treatment and benefits coordinated on July 14, 1994. The institute's health and disability insurance budget for 2017 amounted to more than 37 billion euros.

Activities

* Health insurance: the NIHDI makes rules concerning the

reimbursement Reimbursement is the act of compensating someone for an out-of-pocket expense by giving them an amount of money equal to what was spent. Companies, governments and nonprofit organizations may compensate their employees or officers for necessary ...

of costs for health services and establishes standard

price A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the c ...

s. It manages and allocates the national budget for health reimbursements. The effective reimbursement of health service costs to patients is done by the different health insurance organisations that exist in Belgium (called ''mutualities''). The NIHDI also inspects the correct application of reimbursement rules. * Disability benefits: the NIHDI makes rules about the conditions required to receive benefits in case of labour incapacity caused by

illness A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that ar ...

injury An injury is any physiological damage to living tissue caused by immediate physical stress. An injury can occur intentionally or unintentionally and may be caused by blunt trauma, penetrating trauma, burning, toxic exposure, asphyxiation, o ...

mother ] A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given childbirth, birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the cas ...

hood,

father A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. An adoptive fathe ...

hood or

adoption Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from ...

, establishes the amount of those benefits, and manages the financial support to incapacitated persons who want to start working again. It also combats

disability fraud Disability fraud is the receipt of payment(s) intended for disabled people from a government agency or private insurance company by one who should not be receiving them, or the receipt of a higher amount than one is entitled to. There are variou ...

(a form of

welfare fraud Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...

) by for example checking whether people receiving disability benefits are not working and secretly receiving a

wage A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', '' prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remune ...

. Just as with health reimbursements, the effective payment of benefits to entitled people is done by the ''mutualities''. * Medical accidents: the NIHDI manages the Fund for Medical Accidents and examines whether victims of a medical accident have a right to compensation from the fund. The NIHDI also advises, mediates, registers and reports in cases of medical accidents.

References

{{authority control Federal departments and agencies of Belgium 1964 establishments in Belgium Social security in Belgium Publicly funded health care National health insurance schemes Disability politics Healthcare in Belgium

Organisation

Activities

See also

References