From the 2026 budget audit
A higher earner's sick day is reimbursed at a higher rate — from the same pool you pay into.
Táppénz replaces 60% of prior wages during illness: earnings-scaled benefit, flat-rate levy on every insured worker — 266,561 millió Ft a year.
266,561 millió Ft total; Hungarian workers claimed 26 million sick-benefit days in 2024 — the subsidy to the highest-earning claimants is the largest per day.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: every insured worker receives sick pay when they fall ill. The unseen: the lower-earning worker whose contribution rate is identical to their higher-earning colleague's, yet whose sick-day benefit is a fraction as large — the flat levy transfers, on net, upward.
Objection
"Sick pay protects workers who genuinely cannot work — it is basic social insurance."
Answer
The protection is right; the financing architecture is not. A worker disabled by illness deserves income replacement. But that replacement should come from the worker's own accumulated contributions, not from a pool that makes every lower earner cross-subsidise every higher earner's larger benefit. Individual sickness accounts with a solidarity-fund floor — the structure Chile built for unemployment insurance in 2001 — preserve the protection and end the transfer.
Pass this on to anyone who has wondered why sick pay favours higher earners.
The analyst's verdict
Sick Pay (Táppénz)
Rationale
Táppénz replaces wages during sickness absence, at 60% of the contribution base (50% for workers with shorter insurance histories or in the early days of an absence). In 2024 Hungarian workers claimed approximately 26 million calendar days of sick benefit nationally. The structural objection is identical to CSED's: this is an earnings-replacement benefit — the daily payment scales with the claimant's prior wage — financed from a flat-rate pooled levy. A higher earner's sick day is reimbursed at a higher daily rate than a lower earner's, out of contributions levied at the same rate on both. The pooled-levy-funding-an-earnings-scaled-benefit pattern produces the same within-class cross-subsidy: the diagnostic is earnings-scaled benefit plus flat-rate pooled funding plus universalist branding, and táppénz exhibits all three.
Transition mechanism
Mirrors CSED — funded individual sickness accounts, existing claims and accrued contributor positions fully honoured, a general-revenue minimum floor during the transition, 25-year horizon set by contributor turnover. The structurally relevant distinction from CSED is the much shorter average claim: a sickness absence is measured in days or weeks, not in months around a birth. A shorter, more frequent draw means the account balance a worker needs in order to self-insure the benefit floor accumulates faster relative to the benefit drawn, so practical convergence runs ahead of the nominal 25-year envelope. Individual accumulation accounts with a solidarity-fund floor are not a hypothetical design: Chile operates exactly this structure for unemployment insurance under the Cuenta Individual de Cesantía, established by Law 19,728 of 2001 — each worker accumulates an individual balance, with a defined benefit floor financed from a separate solidarity fund. The mechanism transfers cleanly to sickness insurance.
Affected groups
As CSED. No current claimant is affected. The cross-subsidy that ends ran from lower earners to higher earners.
Sources
- A táppénzes munkanapok száma — grafikon · HR Portál (2025)
- Chile's Unemployment Insurance Scheme (Cuenta Individual de Cesantía, Law 19,728 of 2001) · World Bank (2003)
Free Society Institute
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