Chapter 1. Observing social rights The Law of Ukraine “On the State Budget of Ukraine for 2020” #294-IX of 14 November 2019 approved the expenditures under the budget programme 2308020 “Provision of primary health care to the population” in the amount of UAH 15.2 billion, while the law did not provide for the distribution of expenditures separately to cover services to patients from the “green” and “red” lists. On 1 April 2019, funding for primary care was discontinued for patients who did not file a declaration on selecting a primary care provider (the so-called “red list”)16. Also, during 2019, funding for the implementation of the secondary health care reform was reduced, since the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has reduced the budget of other budget programme 230805 “Pilot project on implementation of state financial guarantees of public health services under the programme of medical guarantees for out-patient polyclinic secondary/specialized healthcare” so that additional UAH 1 billion could be allocated to the budget programme 2308020 “Provision of primary health care to the population.” It should be noted that in 2019, the medical guarantees programme – which is approved by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine within the Law on the State Budget of Ukraine for the corresponding year in accordance with Article 4, item 5 of the Law of Ukraine “On State Financial Guarantees” – was not included in the State Budget. Violation of the right of medical workers to receive wages in a timely manner Payment of wage arrears to healthcare workers was on the Commissioner’s watch list throughout 2019, and she took the respective measures to address appeals of citizens in this field. According to the Ministry of Health, the total amount of wage arrears as of 01.09.2019 was about UAH 1.8 billion. The largest amounts of arrears were observed in Kharkiv (UAH 205.2 million), Lviv (UAH 152.8 million), Ivano-Frankivsk (UAH 151.3 million), and Dnipropetrovsk (UAH 117.1 million) oblasts. This problem was also confirmed during the monitoring visits. 15 At the same time, the needs for financing the health care facilities far exceed the amount of medical subvention from the State Budget. While in average, the medical subventions covered 68.1% of the need, for different local self-governments surveyed this indicator ranged from 26% to 95.3%. At the same time, additional funding from the local budgets across all the respondents averaged to 15.2% of the need and ranged from 0.1% to 55.9% (Data of the Association of Cities of Ukraine, 07.07.2019”O On 1 April 2019, the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine #295 of 3 April 2019 “On Amendments to the Procedures Approved by the Resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine # 2836 of 28 March 2018 and #1117 of 18 December 2018” came into effect. It amended the Procedure for implementation of state guarantees of public healthcare under the programme of medical guarantees for primary health care for 2019. 16 35 CHAPTER 1 The amount of medical subsidy in 2019 averaged 68.1% of the need to cover current expenditures of healthcare institutions, excluding utility and energy costs15.