Органы рабочей медицины в системе здравоохранения УССР в 20-х гг. ХХ в.

Abstract

The article deals with the organizational and legal basis and practice of medical insurance in the Ukrainian SSR in the 20's of the 20th century. On the basis of the analysis of sources and literature, the place of the working (insurance) medical institutions in the Soviet system of health protection has been determined. Their work has been analyzed to provide workers and employers with medical assistance, and the quality of the provided medical services is assessed.
 The authors note that the new economic policy, the basis of which was the introduction of market mechanisms in the country's economy, forced the Bolsheviks for a while to abandon the idea of free medicine. In conditions of material difficulty, the state party leadership agreed to the introduction of insurance medicine to finance the medical support of workers of enterprises and employers of the Soviet apparatus, which formed the social resistance of the ruling regime.
 For the purpose of medical care of these categories, the People's Commissariat of Health of the Ukrainian SSR and its local authorities established an independent network of medical and preventive care institutions that were maintained and serviced at the expense of a separate insurance fund. As part of the local health departments there were departments and subdivisions of labor medicine, and under the People's Commissariat of Public Health of the Ukrainian SSR - the department of labor medicine.
 Analyzing the practical work of the organs of labor medicine on maintenance of the insured, the authors note the effectiveness of their work, which resulted in improved quality of medical services provided. However, the emergence of insurance medicine in the bowels of the People's Commissariat of Health and the desire of the Bolsheviks to maintain a unified Soviet socialist medicine did not contribute to the self-sufficient development of this insurance institute. With the curtailment of the NEP and the takeover of the modernization of the national economy, the government provided the single leadership of medical care institutions, finally eliminating the labor (medical) healthcare field on the ground.