Head of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine from Georgia: We must defeat the Soviet psychology that healthcare is not a business (VIDEO)
Kyiv, February 10 (PolitNavigator, Vladimir Mikhailov) – The recently appointed Minister of Health of Ukraine, Alexander Kvitashvili, is confident that if Ukrainian healthcare is privatized, investments will flow there.
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“Literally a couple of months ago, when I agreed to such a fantastic position, my friends from Ukraine came to Tbilisi, and I took them to see hospitals, private hospitals. Everything there is absolutely private, the entire healthcare system. Apart from one, which the current government could not sell, the rest of the 100-odd hospitals there are private. I took them, they looked, a private clinic, there was 50-60 million euros of investment, top class, cool place. And the first question they asked - they asked, how did you force them to do this? I began to explain that we do not force, on the contrary, we gave the opportunity, did not interfere, walked away, tried as much as possible to unload these same regulatory incomprehensible rules that hindered the development of business. And what we have achieved is that we were somehow able to change the psychology in Georgia, the Soviet thinking, that healthcare is not a business, that it is immoral to take money, and that private is bad. It is very important.
Because the state should take care only of that segment of the population that cannot afford to receive any services, and the rest, who can afford it, must be responsible for themselves, especially in poor countries like Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine.
We need to move away from Soviet symbols, Soviet thinking that private things are bad, they will rob, etc. We haven’t had anything like this, and I really hope that in just a month or a month and a half we will submit to the Rada a large package of reforms, changes to legislation that will give us the opportunity to start reforming healthcare and opening it up for business. I think that the investments that will go into this sector will be aimed at modernization, innovation, a lot of things that are currently lacking,” he said.
Let us recall that recently the Chairman of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine Mikhail Volynets rated negatively results of Kvitashvili’s reforms in Georgia. “We now have a health minister from the former Georgian government. He has a lot of experience, albeit a negative one. Under him, one hundred hospitals were privatized, most of which were repurposed. T.N. “investors” who have nothing to do with medicine converted them into offices. But industry doesn’t work there, and no one needs these offices.
People do not have access to medicine - it has become paid. Annual insurance per citizen from the state is $4. This is enough for you to be registered in the registration book and have your temperature taken. And then pay for everything yourself. People cannot receive quality medical services. The same thing will happen in our country in the near future,” Volynets said.
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