The mandatory medical assistance insurance premium for 2007 will constitute 1209 lei, as opposed to 816 this year, which constitutes an increase of almost 50%. The Parliament passed on Thursday, December 07 the bill regarding the funds for the mandatory insurance for medical assistance for 2007 in first reading. Together with the increase in the price of the policy, the wage percentage to be paid by employees and employers has also increased. As such, in 2007, 5% of wages will be transferred, compared to the current 4%. The employees and employers will pay 2.5% each. The penalty for not meeting the payment deadlines for the insurance premium was set at 0.1%. According to Gheorghe Rusu, general executive of the National Commission for Insurance in Medicine (NCIM), the insurance premium was calculated in relation to the medium wage forecasted for 2007, which will constitute 2015 lei. The project predicts incomes and expenses of about 1.938 billion lei. The increase in incomes, about 1.2 billion lei, will constitute the transfers from the state budget, an increase of around 19% from 2006. The insurance premiums, in percentage terms, paid by employees and employers will constitute 705 million lei, or over 42% more than they did the previous year. The highest expenses – 1.83 billion – will go to the fund for payments for current medical services. Of these, approximately 930 million will go to hospital medical care, 567 million – for primary medical care, etc almost 39 million – for prophylaxes measures. Of the total budget of the fund, over 27 million lei represents administrative expenses. The opposition MPs have criticized the bill, mentioning the incompetent management of these funds. Also, the speakers referred themselves to the very high cost of the policy and to the unjustifiably high volume of administrative expenses. According to the MP Vladimir Filat, the increase in the cost of the policy will lead to a decrease in the number of people which will be able to afford it and, at the same time, to an increase in the number of employers and employees who will present erroneous values of their salaries. Filat said that the parliamentary faction PD will vote the project in its second hearing if the proposed amendments are accepted. The MP Valeriu Cosarciuc declared that, according to the calculations, the policy for 2007 should cost 875 lei, and Serafim Urecheanu qualified this project as a “rip off of the poor”. According to the MP Dumitru Braghis, in the last 3 years, the insurance premium increase approximately 4 fold, without any improvement in the quality of the services rendered, such that, he claims, these increases only lead to “some more money being stolen”. Representatives of the communist faction mentioned certain deficiencies of the bill, but said that they would come with amendments for the second hearing. In its first hearing, the bill was voted for only by the communist MPs.