Did the Czech Finance Minister Zbynek Stanjura call for pensioners to start paying health insurance? No, that's not true: the quote attributed to Stanjura is fake, and the minister denied the claim when he first took office in 2021.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published by TikTok on Aug 26, 2023, with a picture of Zbynek Stanjura and a quote in Czech, translated by Lead Stories, which reads:
Pensions should not be lowered, but there should be an obligatory contribution to the health care system, as we are the only country in Europe, with Slovakia, that does not have that...Pensioners in the Czech Republic abuse the health care system most in Europe and do not pay an extra penny.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Sep 1 10:23:02 2023 UTC)
The Czech Finance Minister Zbynek Stanjura, took office in December 2021 after his party, the Civic Democrats, or ODS, formed the government. The same post, shown above on TikTok, appeared on social media platforms around the time he took office, aimed at discrediting the new government. Examples of this can be found here or here.
Stanjura himself denied the quote (This link shows the same page in the screenshot above. Is it Stanjura's FB page?) in the Facebook post on November 1, 2021, saying:
I have never said such a thing, none of this is my opinion and I have never proposed it and never will.
Stanjura warned about the spread of misinformation aimed at pitting young and old against each other by creating fear and called the claim his government was preparing mandatory health insurance payments from pensioners "nonsense".
In a telephone conversation on September 4, a Czech Finance Ministry representative confirmed to Lead Stories there were no such plans.
The hoax resurfaced on TikTok as the government waited for Czech President Petr Pavel to sign a new pension bill, which among other things, tightens the rules for early retirement and regulates annual pension indexation. Pavel, after early hesitations, signed the bill on Sept. 1, while voicing reservations about how it would change pension adjustments in the future.
