Latvia spends 350 million euros per year on paying residents’ sick leave, while Lithuania uses only 70 million euros per year for this purpose, despite the fact that Lithuania has 40% more inhabitants, according to information compiled by LDDK.
Such a huge difference arises because of the sick leave payment model. In Latvia, the employee pays for their own first sick day, then the employer pays 75% for the next two sick days and a further six days the employer pays 80% of the average earnings. Only after that does the state take over the baton, paying 80% of the employee’s average earnings from budget funds.
In Lithuania, the system is different – there the employee does not cover anything at all, and only the first two sick days are covered 80% by the employer, without overburdening the company or institution and thus not losing its competitiveness. After the first two sick days, responsibility for the patient and control of sick leave is taken over by the state, which for five days pays from the state budget 40% of the employee’s average earnings, and starting from the 8th sick day – the support is 80%.
In Estonia, the system provides that the employee is sick at their own expense for the first three days, but starting from the 4th day the employer pays for five days, covering 70% of the average earnings, and after that the state continues to pay this 70%.
“Practice shows that regulation has an impact on the number of sick leave certificates. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Estonia temporarily switched to the same model as in Latvia, but later returned to its own system. After the return, the number of people on sick leave also decreased significantly,” says the Director General of the Latvian Employers’ Confederation (LDDK) Kaspars Gorkšs. He points out that it would be useful to introduce a system like Lithuania’s, where the state assumes greater responsibility for paying for sick leave. That would also be an incentive for the state to improve regulation and the supervision of sick leave, which works successfully in Lithuania.
“Initially, we considered proposing to introduce the Estonian model in Latvia, where employees themselves would pay for the first three days, with the option in a collective agreement to set a higher level of employer involvement in compensating the first sick days (this works effectively in Estonia), but such a proposal was opposed both by the Free Trade Union Confederation of Latvia and by the government, therefore it is essential that the number of sick leave days paid by employers is at least aligned with the Estonian level – five days.
Inc. also examined Ministry of Health statistics on sick leave, which highlight interesting paradoxes that could be studied for days and weeks. For example, in 2024 sick leave for a period longer than 9 weeks was issued to more than 20,000 people, of whom 5,778 were ill for another reason that was not pregnancy, care of a sick child, an occupational disease, an accident, or a traffic accident. Of these just under six thousand people, 645 employed persons were over 70 years of age. This is roughly the same number as those who were ill in their prime working years aged 30 to 39, and a further 220 people had long-term illness due to other causes aged 19 to 29.
The situation in the regions is also peculiar – in some places, most people of working age fall ill with specific doctors. For example, in Daugavpils in December 2024 alone, 42 people received sick leave for a period longer than 9 weeks. Of these, 33 were pregnant women, while the remaining nine fell ill due to “another cause”. Of these nine, three people, all of whom were over 50+, obtained sick leave from three different doctors, while the other six fell ill under the care of doctor Aleksejs Jefremkins. Five of the six were between 30 and 49 years of age.
In other towns, some doctors apparently are simply unlucky with their patients. For example, in Kuldīga, family doctor Aigars Pūpols in 2024 issued 12 sick leaves for a period longer than two months (in one case the reason given was a strike), three leaves for up to 9 weeks, nine for up to 8 weeks, 16 leaves for up to 7 weeks and 43 leaves for up to six weeks.
Meanwhile, his colleague in Kuldīga, Aija Būvmeistere, over the course of the year issued only two sick leaves in all sick-leave categories above five weeks. Most likely she happened to have younger patients.
Meanwhile, in Tukums municipality, family and occupational disease doctor Lilita Bētiņa not only regularly receives the sickest patients, but she herself is almost constantly plagued by technical problems. In 2024 she issued 34 sick leaves with a term longer than 9 weeks, of which only in 13 cases were they registered on the date of issue, mostly for pensioners. In contrast, sick leaves for people of working age mostly bear a note that “for technical reasons the sick leave (DNL) was registered within 5 working days”. This, of course, may mean that the doctor really did have technical problems, but it may also mean that a sick leave certificate was needed with a retroactive date, when the patient had already not been at work for several days.
“Mutual tolerance in society towards such things is also very important. First of all, it must be understood that sick leave is money from our common budget, and those who use it dishonestly are in fact stealing from the budget,” said LDDK President Andris Bite recently on the TV24 program “Naudas Cena” (“The Price of Money”).
Originally published at https://inc-baltics.com/latvijai-budzeta-terini-par-slimibas-lapam-ir-piecas-reizes-lielaki-neka-lietuvai-un-par-90-miljoniem-lielaki-neka-igaunijai/
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