Sergey Lebedenko

“Motor-Garant” initiates the current dialogue

We will not discover anything new saying that all the people of the planet Earth without exception are sometimes ill in a varying degree. Just in some civilized countries, when you have to go to the hospital it is not so expensive along with a quality, skilled treatment, while in others, like ours, unfortunately, it often turns into a huge problem for the patient. The answer is simple – smoothly running system of health insurance in the European countries is really for the benefit of the people. In our country this issue is in terms of the budget deficit and the lack of funds of the population, which becomes more urgent every year.

How to use the available funds on health care with ultimate good, to make the system transparent and understandable, effective for everyone – this is not the first day when the issue is on the agenda of one of the old-timers of health insurance market in Zaporozhye – Insurance Company (IC) “Motor-Garant”, work experience of which is already more than 14 years in this market segment. This is what our conversation with the President of Double Liability Company (DLC) “IC “Motor-Garant” Sergey Lebedenko about.

Sergey Stepanovich, according to the scant information that an ordinary citizen has, the health insurance system is far from a complete understanding of everyone, perhaps, even specialists?

That’s because there are no clear rules of the market. Those who work in this field know more and because of the specificity they face questions the answers to which cannot be found alone. These are questions of the state level and competence of legislators. And we, insurers as specialists, and people as the main and only concerned user must put these questions and offer the solutions together. Together we should clearly identify the problem and jointly come to the solution that would suit everyone.

Well, is it a kind of legislative initiative?

Yes, all sensible people, on the successful example of the European countries, understand that Ukraine needs a system of the obligatory medical insurance, which is supposed to be regulated by, for instance, “The law of obligatory health insurance”. It will not appear just out of nowhere or blind copying. Internal discussions among insurers or government officials, deputies cannot solve the problem. That is why we support the initiative to create a working group, a pool of all interested parties, publicly inviting to get into gear and to find a solution by joint efforts.

“Motor-Garant” is ready not only to initiate this question, isn’t it?

Absolutely. The words of our company correspond to its deeds. We are ready to establish this initiative group on our basis, to register, to improve the algorithm and to model the work of experimental health insurance system at the district level. Without destroying anything we will conduct an experiment, the course and the results of which will be available to everyone. And then we will come up with an offer to introduce our groundworks with definite results on the state level.

If it is possible – the initial problem and  consolidatedly the proposed way of solving ...

Today, paying taxes, every citizen delegates to the state the right and the means to be engaged in the protection of his health. But it turns out that the funds allocated to the health system are sorely lacking. Being ill, a person does not get the necessary level of services and medicines, he has to search for a qualified doctor, to pay for medicines. And in case of emergency, when the disease comes suddenly and there is simply no money – he is one-to-one with the trouble. We offer a simple and clear scheme: through the system of obligatory health insurance, for example, in our district, he directs his funds to an insurance company on a special account. The state, according to a clear and understandable Law, controls the use of these funds, and administrative functions through their medical experts, professional financiers are performed by an insurance company. Medical expert will be a first client advisor and information on unfair clinic, in our age of the Internet, will instantly become available to the public. Medical and insurance environment will instantly become more competitive! After all, nobody will go to a doctor with a bad reputation, and nobody will work with him.

You mentioned the public funds, but the same way a plant or a company may deposit the funds for the employee partly or fully, don’t you think so?

Quite true! An employer is interested that his employees are healthy and get qualified medical care. But not always he can have his own medical unit, buy modern equipment and pay decent salaries to doctors. In the orbit of health insurance there are already public and private clinics. For us, the insurers, it makes no difference who pay the money to. The main thing is that there is effect for a person – paying insurance fees he gets qualified medical care, good medicines, rehabilitates and recovers as soon as possible! Today the problem is that the relationship with the public clinics, institutions are being built mainly in contractual relations. And everything must be transparent, clear and understandably to everyone written in the Law.

(Interview to “MIG” newspaper)

Date: 5 May 2015

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