Attitudes towards patient payments in Ukraine: is there a place for official patient charges?

The attitudes of health care system stakeholders towards official patient charges have not been studied in Ukraine although both the central and local governments have several times considered to introduce such charges. Instead, informal patient payments are widespread and wellestablished. Ukrainian patients pay either unofficially or quasi-officially (i.e. charitable contributions) to health care institutions. The reasonable solution for dealing with these types of payments would be the introduction of official patient charges. However, the legal base for such reform in Ukraine is ambiguous. The Constitution declares that health care provision is free-of-charge. Nevertheless, in our study, representatives of stakeholders groups appear keen not only on discussing official charges but are also favor their introduction. The expectations regarding the possible objectives of these charges expressed by different stakeholders are the focus of this paper