Delays in placing on the agenda four bills needed to launch a reform – №6327 6328, 6329, and 6347 – is jeopardizing the whole reform plan for the next three years. This was stated by Ulana Suprun, Acting Minister of Healthcare of Ukraine, at a press briefing held at Ukraine Crisis Media Center. “We have been waiting for some changes in healthcare for 26 years, but they do not happen. […] If we fail to do this by the end of this session, we will not be able to keep within 2017 budget process for 2018, will not be able to change the primary care system and the secondary – next year […] and launch a relevant financing system in 2019,” she stressed.
Ulana Suprun noted that the concept, which was the basis for the bills, had been discussed for 4 months. The Cabinet approved it in November 2016. Then there was extensive discussion of the bills. “They were discussed publicly and registered at the Verkhovna Rada website more than a month ago. There was plenty of time to read, give advice, propose to establish working groups for their improvement, but we received no appeals. But now that we place them on the agenda, it seems that MPs have never seen them before,” she stressed. “ObamaCare [health care system in the US] is discussed every day on each TV show – and it is only about changing some things in the system, which has been functioning well. As to our situation, we have inefficient system that has been failing for 25 years, and now we even cannot place the bills on the agenda, because MPs are not interested,” emphasized the Acting Minister.
“We do not want to share the same fate as the draft law on education – the committee has been considering it for more than a year; there are 1,200 amendments to it. […] We would like to place them on the agenda as quickly as possible to launch discussions at the level of committees and working groups. We will communicate this to the deputies. We want to thank ‘Narodnyi Front’ and ‘Samopomich’. According to statistics, they most actively support the reform. […] I hope that cooperation with NGOs will help us get across to the deputies,” noted Ulana Suprun.
Meanwhile, on Monday, patients’ organizations gave the President, Prime Minister, speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and MPs 500 “life packages” urging them to support the bills needed to launch the healthcare reform. The Cabinet supported 4 bills that are currently registered in the Verkhovna Rada – Nos.6327, 6328, 6329, 6347.
