This whole issue of free medication drives me crazy. Funding is allocated for it, after all. And in most cases, these are not even especially expensive drugs. They’re outrageously expensive for sick pensioners, of course, but on the scale of a regional healthcare budget, it’s peanuts.
And yet it’s the same everywhere: the chief physician says, “All medications here are free.” The patients reply: “We bought everything ourselves.”
I’m very glad that we’ve started helping the medical trade union Doctors’ Alliance with reports on their hospital inspections.
It makes you realize that you’re doing important work. Please watch it too, and send it to doctors you know—this kind of genuinely independent trade union might be exactly the help they need.
Today we’re once again looking at a hospital in the Moscow Region. This time, it’s in the remote Yegoryevsky District.
Staff at the Yegoryevsk Central District Hospital turned to the Doctors’ Alliance and reported shortages of medication and strange staffing reshuffles.
The union’s leader came with our film crew to look into the situation. The chief physician, Khachatryan, had intimidated everyone there, but some people still agreed to speak on camera about the problems. It turned out that all patients are being forced to buy for themselves medications that every hospital is supposed to provide.
And then the most remarkable part came out. There was a morgue on the hospital grounds that also provided funeral services. A new chief physician arrived, cleared everyone out, and installed his businessman friends instead. Now funeral prices in Yegoryevsk have gone up severalfold.
