Costa Rican Social Security Fund

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (July 2009) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|es|Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Costa Rican Social Security Fund

Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social
Formation	1 November 1941; 82 years ago (1 November 1941)
Type	Governmental organization
Purpose	Health Services
Headquarters	San José, Costa Rica
President	Álvaro Ramos
Main organ	Board of Directors (Junta Directiva)[1]
Website	www.ccss.sa.cr/index

The Costa Rican Social Security Fund (Spanish: Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social) is in charge of most of the nation's public health sector. Its role in public health (as the administrator of health institutions) is key in Costa Rica, playing an important part in the state's national health policy making.

Its services are available to all citizens and permanent legal residents. This governmental entity's functions encompass both the administrative and functional aspects. Originally, services were carried out at private hospitals but funded by the Costa Rican Social Security Fund. Not until the mid-1960s did the Caja begin constructing its own hospitals staffed by public employees.^[2] It has the obligation (as a public institution) to formulate and execute health programs that are both preventive (such as: vaccination, informational, fumigation, etc.) and healing (such as: surgery, radiation therapy, pharmacy, clinical, etc.) in nature.^[3]

The Costa Rican Social Security Fund is also charged with the administration of the public pension system.