The Chamber of Commerce wants an additional impact analysis of the current payment of the temporary sickness benefit

The current temporary sickness benefit payment system stipulates that the employee's own responsibility for compensating sick days is up to one day, the employer's responsibility is from the second to the fifth day, and the health insurance fund's responsibility is from the sixth day of illness. The Ministry of Social Affairs has submitted a bill to amend the law, according to which the current temporary sickness benefit regulation will continue indefinitely from 2023.

The Chamber does not support the proposal in this form because the impact analysis contained in the explanatory letter has very important shortcomings, and based on it, it is not possible to make a considered decision whether to change the temporary distinction to indefinite or not.

The Chamber of Commerce points out that, for example, the analysis does not include the statistics of sickness benefits before the introduction of the temporary distinction and after the introduction of the fixed-term distinction. Without such comparison, it is difficult to say whether and what the impact of the planned change will be and whether the change will fulfil its purpose. For example, it remains unclear whether people started taking more sick days as a result of the temporary change and how the duration of sick days changed. Without such analysis, it is also difficult to predict the financial impact of the planned change on employers and the health insurance fund. In the Chamber's opinion, it is not sufficient if the explanatory letter only refers to the data of the Health Insurance Fund's 2021 analysis, if newer data is available.

The impact analysis also does not identify situations where people are not sick, but have been issued a certificate of incapacity for work, as a possible risk. Even before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was quite a lot of feedback from companies about suspicions that there are situations where an employee is not sick, but has been issued a sick leave, i.e. the employee uses sick days as so-called additional leave. It is necessary to analyse whether this trend has worsened with the introduction of the temporary distinction or not.

The Chamber of Commerce believes that since the bill has a significant impact, including a financial impact that reaches tens of millions of euros per year, the Ministry of Social Affairs must, as a first step, carry out an additional impact analysis that highlights the significant impacts of the amendment. Only then will it be possible to assess whether and what changes should be made in legislation related to sickness benefits.

Read more: Which sickness benefit payment system do you prefer? | Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry