Moldova is not ready for liberalization of mandatory health insurance market, study

Moldova is not ready for the liberalization of the compulsory health insurance market, while the private companies that want to get involved do not meet all the necessary conditions, says the study “Feasibility of the liberalization of the mandatory health insurance market in Moldova”, which was conducted by the Independent Analytical Center “Expert-Grup”, Info-Prim Neo reports. The author of the study Ana Popa, program director at “Expert-Grup”, and independent expert Veaceslav Cernica said that all the countries with social health insurance have population coverage of almost 100%, while the number of those who contribute compared with the number of those who do not contribute and of insured persons is higher than in Moldova. “The insurance companies interested in the liberalization of the market do not have a rich experience to assume these responsibilities and the personnel needed to be involved in the monitoring of service provision. Only nine of the 24 insurers working in Moldova deal with voluntary health insurance,” said Ana Popa. She also said that the services included in the additional health insurance and the categories of persons who can insure themselves are limited, while the sums are low and cannot cover the costs of long-term treatment. There is no information base that could be used to establish a good fund redistribution mechanism and the risk of reducing the deprived persons’ access to medical services is high. The experts said that for the liberalized health insurance system to be effective, the insurers and the medical institutions involved must aim to reduce the excessive consumption of drugs and improve the quality of control. Modern technologies should be widely implemented, the medical infrastructure must be improved, the medical personnel should be stimulated and corruption must be eradicated from the system. The representatives of private insurance companies said there should be created a governmental working group that will include the competent ministries and interested companies so that they could present relevant arguments and proposals.