A differentiated access to public services is witnessed in the Republic of Moldova. The public servants receive treatment in much better conditions than the rest of the people, but at the expense of taxpayers, said Gennady Turcanu, programs coordinator at the Center for Health Policies and Studies (PAS).

In a press club meeting, the expert said there are curative-sanatorium and recuperation associations of the Government’s apparatus designed for Moldovan officials. It is a system inherited from the Soviet period, when the government and officials had their own health system. “This system was kept in the Republic of Moldova, evidently not with all those conditions, but a part of them exist. These sanatorium-like institutions for functionaries provide other services than those that can be accessed by ordinary people,” stated Gennady Turcanu.

These institutions are financed with money from the state budget through the State Chancellery. A budget of millions of lei for maintaining them is annually approved. Furthermore, the National Health Insurance Company also allocated money. “These institutions are maintained on our money, on public money. We pay taxes and ensure preferential conditions for statesmen and functionaries,” said Gennady Turcanu.

He also said that after the declaration of independence, the differentiated system of medical services for state officials was abandoned, but this was restored when the agrarians came to power. Among the ex-Soviet states, such a system was kept in Ukraine, Russia and Moldova, but does not exist in the Baltic states, where the Presidents and Prime Ministers receive treatment in state medical institutions with guard, but there are no institutions funded from the state budget for functionaries only.