Healthcare: No Cure then Swimming, if Nothing Else. FBK study of “How Much is Russia”

Another stage of research of “How much is Russia: 10 years later” focused on the healthcare, physical culture and social welfare. When implementing a similar project a decade ago the authors pointed out that the sector was underestimated. Unfortunately, today in spite of some improvement, the problem has not exhausted itself.

The final estimation of costs showed an increase in the segment value by 1.6 times over 10 years up to 141.9 bn roubles. And at the same time the number of hospitals has dramatically reduced during that time by 39.8%. If as at the beginning of 2003 there were 10.3 thousands of such facilities, then as at the beginning of 2013 there were only 6.3 thousands. Undoubtedly positive is the fact that the number of swimming pools skyrocketed (73.4%) from 2639 in 2002 up to 4575 in 2012.

Speaking about the position of healthcare in the structure of the national economy we see a significant delay in comparison with the majority of European countries. In 2002 the portion of the health care and social services gross value added in the GDP in Russia was 2.7%, and 10 years later – 3.3%. To compare: by the results of 2012 the highest value was shown by Denmark – 11.4%. The gap between us and the other countries (France, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Denmark and others) even increased because the health care and social services gross value added in the GDP in these countries, which exceeded the Russian, has grown even higher since 2002. The only European state where the portion of GVA of healthcare in the GDP according to Y2012 data was lower than in Russia is Latvia. “So, judging by the financial priority for health care and social services, our country today is a much less social state than many others,” concludes Igor Nikolayev, the FBK Institute of Strategic Analysis director, supervising the research.

That is also connected with the fact that the health care spending in this country relatively increase as a rule depending on the proximity of the presidential elections. That was most evident on the eve of the elections in the spring of 2008 when the “Health” national project was under the implementation. In 2007 the share of expenditure on health care and physical culture in the total expenditure of the consolidated budget reached its peak in modern Russian history – 12.1%. According to the results of 2013 this indicator was 10.2% only.

The detailed materials of the study can be found at skolko.ru