President’s office says health insurance plan spinning wheels
MOSCOW, Jan 27 /Prime-TASS/ -- The Russian government has so far failed to take satisfactory steps toward the implementation of a system of mandatory health care insurance in Russia, the Main Presidential Control Department said in a report published Monday on the official presidential site, www.kremlin.ru.
“The government did not work out the concept of developing the mandatory health insurance system, which prevents a step-by-step increasing of the share of health insurance as part of the public health care sector,” the report read.
Mandatory health insurance accounts for a mere 31% of payments for medical services in the country, according to the report.
A significant portion of Russia’s population does not have health insurance policies at all, with the number of policyholders in some of Russia’s regions as low as 50%, the department said.
One of the most urgent issues to resolve is providing health care compensation to the unemployed.
In 2001, average annual payments for health care for one unemployed person were at 254 rubles, which is 75% less than the estimated requirements.
The report partly blamed the situation on Russia’s Tax Ministry, as well as on the Federal Mandatory Health Insurance Fund and local funds that failed to collect tax arrears to the system of mandatory health insurance. At the time of the sector’s review, the amount of arrears stood at 133 billion rubles.
The report also accused the management of the Federal Mandatory Health Insurance Fund of inefficient use of money and of misspending about 700 million rubles during the past two-and-a-half years.
Another 16 million rubles was used to hike wages of the fund’s workers and to buy voluntary health insurance policies.
Finally, the department said that the Russian parliament also contributed to the situation as it failed to approve laws creating the basis for the transition to the system of mandatory health insurance. (31.8015 rubles – U.S. $1)
Next Article