It does not arise from the aforementioned provision that treatment and care in social care institutions are provided only the case of a concession. The provision is clear: compulsory health insurance gives full and unconditional right to treatment and care to all insured persons. According to the Ombudsman’s assessment, the ZZZS’s interpretation regarding the concession requirement has no legal basis in the Health Care and Health Insurance Act. We believe that the discrimination pointed out by the complainant was not due to the Act, but to a misinterpretation. 2.13 SOCIAL MATTERS Regarding the foregoing, we determined that neither legal amendments nor a review of constitutionality due to a lacuna were needed to resolve the issue. In our opinion, the Act provides a sufficient legal basis for the payment of performed health services subject to compulsory health insurance. To avoid future complications, we propose that the issue be fully clarified in the new Act. CASES CONSIDERED RESOLVED AND FOUNDED 2015 Index 15/14 287 231 80.5 201 41 20.4 114 91 79.8 85 17 20 13.2 Social services 18 21 116.7 16 3 18.8 13.3 Institutional care 52 46 88.5 42 12 28.6 13.4 Poverty - general 19 20 105.3 18 3 16.7 13.5 Violence - anywhere 17 9 52.9 9 0 0 13.6 Other 67 44 65.7 31 6 19.4 13. Social security 13.1 Social benefits and assistance NO. OF RESOLVED NO. OF FOUNDED PERCENTAGE OF FOUNDED AMONG RESOLVED 2014 FIELD OF WORK 2.13 SOCIAL MATTERS 2.12 HEALTH CARE AND HEALTH INSURANCE Act is an individual right of citizens for which they have to pay an insurance premium and as such it cannot be further burdened. Surprisingly, the number of complaints referring to social security decreased by almost 20 per cent compared to 2014, whereas the number of complaints involving social services increased significantly, including general issues regarding poverty. In our opinion, such results were not due to citizens’ social security improving, but the increasing apathy of individuals whose many years of efforts to improve their standard of living have failed to bear fruit. Certain authorities, to which people refer regarding their problems, do not respond to the letters they receive (which is a violation of the principle of good administration) and other competent authorities delay their decision making (more on this below). We accept the fact that the reduction in the number of complaints occurred also because people recognise that the Ombudsman cannot help individuals financially or influence the competent authorities to allocate assistance while bypassing regulations. Many complainants receive suitable expert information and advice by phone, which certainly helps reduce the number of complaints. Our staff’s work was organised in a way that enabled expert assistants responsible for certain fields to provide basic information by phone, and they can thus advise complainants to instigate suitable procedures or contact the relevant authorities. The fact that one-fifth of complaints relating to social security were founded is still of great concern (27.7 per cent in 2014), and as much as 28.6 per cent concerning institutional care. In the 2014 annual report, we proposed the adoption of measures to provide fast and qualitative information to citizens on various ways of claiming social rights (recommendation no. 95). This year, we discovered that those in need of help are still not given comprehensive information about all the options available to them. State aid for citizens frequently depends on an expert worker at a social work centre, who in certain cases informs individuals in advance on the inappropriateness of filing certain applications. The decision of individuals about what assistance they should seek is their alone, and expert workers must assist them to do so and furnish them with all the information they need. We thus proposed to the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and 134 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OMBUDSMAN OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA FOR 2015 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS OMBUDSMAN OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA FOR 2015 135