The new concept on introducing health insurance in Armenia will be presented to the public in 1-2 months, Armenian health minister Arsen Torosyan told reporters on Friday.

Specialists are currently reviewing the existing concept and making changes, taking into account comments received from colleagues and the public According to him, the new concept will be posted at e-draft.am.

Preparing for the introduction of a health insurance system, according to the minister, work is underway to involve more citizens in the process of providing state guarantees for the provision of medical services to the population. When discussing the budget for 2021, the minister promised to try to attract additional funds to provide medical services to pensioners in the framework of the state order: according to preliminary estimates, about AMD 15-20 billion will be required.

According to Torosyan, if it is resolved to provide medical services to vulnerable groups of the population, it will be much easier to organize a health insurance system for people with jobs and incomes. If the state can pay for the treatment of representatives of the vulnerable layers of their other taxes, the health tax may drop from the 6% that was mentioned earlier, to, for example, 2%.

The concept of introducing medical insurance proposed by the Armenian health ministry received negative assessments from both experts and the public. It was proposed to introduce a 4-6% tax on wages. The amount collected was supposed to cover medical services for both those who pay the tax and for the so-called vulnerable segments of the population.