Translated material
Safety budget
The State Duma allocated an additional 34.9 billion rubles to the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund
State Duma deputies tried to save the Federal Compulsory Health Insurance Fund from new shocks next year. Last Friday, during the second reading of the draft budget of the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund for 2007, they voted for an additional allocation of 34.0 billion rubles. to provide free medicines to Russian beneficiaries. And at first glance, the fund, almost all of whose management is now in pre-trial detention centers in Moscow , is insured against the debt trap - ends meet. FFOMS revenues next year should amount to 139.6 billion rubles, and expenses - 139.5 billion. However, given the significant overexpenditure of funds under the additional drug supply program (DLO) this year (pharmaceutical market experts call the amount up to $1 billion .), it can be assumed that it will be difficult for the temporary management of the scandalous structure to keep the fund from “going into the red.”The afternoon plenary session of the Duma began with a “warm-up” - they adopted the draft law “On the implementation of the FFOMS budget for 2005,” in which the government reported on all expenses and income for this period. The document turned out to be nostalgic, since it recalled those times when the fund, no matter how hard it tried, could not spend all the money allocated to it in a year. Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee on Health Protection Nikolai Gerasimenko especially emphasized that the surplus in 2005 “was formed mainly from federal budget funds transferred to the fund for the provision of medicines to certain categories of citizens.” As a result, it turned out that the FFOMS received 83 billion rubles. (including a little more than 50 billion for DLO), and spent 71.5 (about 30 billion for DLO). That is, 11.5 billion rubles remained unspent.
Of course, there was nothing good in such savings, if you look at it. The fact is that in the first year of its existence, the program of preferential drugs had not yet really started working: the list of drugs was much smaller than in 2006, there were supply interruptions in some regions, and the entire system operated very slowly. So the “surplus” was formed.
We can say that this surplus brought the leadership of the FFOMS under the monastery. For 2006, they included only 29 billion rubles in the budget for drug provision for beneficiaries, without taking into account that the flywheel had already been spun up and the program was working at full capacity. The situation was aggravated by the fact that, to celebrate, the fund’s management expanded the list of drugs included in the DLO in the middle of last year. Including due to a significant amount of expensive imported drugs. Contracts were concluded with manufacturers for supplies, under which there was nothing to pay already in the summer of 2006. Almost all budget funds were spent in just six months.
Whether it will be possible to avoid a repetition of the drug scandal next year is a big question. It is planned to allocate about 45 billion rubles for the long-suffering DLO program in 2007. But a representative of one of the largest Russian pharmaceutical distributors, who was involved in the FFOMS scandal, told Vremya Novostey that the risk of events developing in the market according to the 2006 scenario is quite high, since “it will take a long time to pay off old debts from the new budget.” At the same time, the DLO program is indeed working faster and faster, and the lists of drugs for beneficiaries, even after three noticeable reductions, still remain large.
In the coming year, additional FFOMS funds, in addition to DLO, are allocated for medical examinations for orphans in inpatient institutions, for the provision of state social assistance to certain categories of citizens for additional provision of medicines. A significant share of the fund's expenses in the amount of 24.8 billion rubles. is used to finance the activities of the priority national project “Health”. Of these, 4 billion rubles. (which is twice as much as this year) will go to the budgets of territorial health insurance funds for additional medical examinations of working citizens.