Double Billing for Eye Surgery: Court Takes Nine Suspects' Passports, While Up to 4,000 Patients Still Don't Know Who Pays Them Back

A patient lies down for eye surgery and pays out of pocket. According to the Interior Ministry's suspicions, the Health Insurance Fund had already paid for that procedure. Once by the person on the table, once by all the insured through their contributions, and both payments into one private hospital.

The Basic Criminal Court in Skopje, at the request of the organised crime prosecutors, imposed precautionary measures on nine people: seizure of travel documents and an obligation to report to the court. According to media reports, they include Bilal Kara, owner of Sante Plus Group and chairman of the board of the European Eye Hospital. The Interior Ministry said criminal complaints were filed against 11 people and one private healthcare institution, eight people were detained, and around 50,000 euros and mobile phones were seized in searches.

The numbers in the complaint

The suspicions aren't small. From 2022 to 2025 the institution allegedly gained an unlawful benefit of around 4.25 million euros, through false data in the Fund's electronic system and invoices with false content. The damage to the Fund itself, depending on who gives the figure, is 1.5 to 1.7 million euros. Between 3,000 and 4,000 patients could have been harmed, and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski speaks of around 4,000 cases.

Among those charged, according to information so far, are former and current Fund employees, including a former director general who ran the institution from 2017 to 2020. That's the part of the story that should worry people most. If the suspicions are confirmed, the false invoices didn't slip past the controls, they went through them. Who approved those payments, and who was checking them at all?

The hospital: We harmed nobody

The European Eye Hospital rejects all of this. It says the institution has never harmed "a single patient, whether from a health, moral or financial standpoint" and that even after more than a year without Fund support it has managed to preserve quality and affordable prices. It called on news portals to let the institutions do their job. Guilt, of course, is still for a court to establish.

Under their Facebook post, however, a comment appeared from what is most likely a former patient, claiming that people were sent home after surgery without any document and that in 2025 it was cash only. That's a comment, not evidence. Which is exactly why someone should check it.

Who pays the money back?

Mickoski says the money will have to be returned through a court procedure and that other institutions with Fund contracts are also being checked. How many years, though, can an ordinary person wait on a procedure like that for the money from one operation?

For now there is no special procedure for this case. Patients who had surgery can collect their bills, fiscal receipts, discharge papers and medical reports and ask the Fund in writing to check whether the service was also billed there. The Fund's general procedure provides for a decision within 30 days, or 45 when a medical commission's opinion is needed, and an appeal within 15 days to the health minister. But whether patients will have to prove harm individually, or the Fund will check the cases itself, has yet to be clearly stated.

Journalists also asked the prime minister whether those detained include a person named honorary consul of Macedonia in Turkey in 2023. His answer was that he doesn't know the individuals and that it's a question for the Interior Ministry. The court took the passports in a single day. How long will the patients wait to find out whether anyone owes them?