[MEDICAL INSURANCE AS A METHOD OF SOCIAL PROTECTION OF CITIZENS IN UKRAINE]

The article is focused on studying social and economic conditions affecting the choice of the type of health insurance. The objective of the article is to justify the type of medical insurance as the method of social protection of citizens in Ukraine, where the access of the population to medical care is the key condition. The methodology of this study includes traditional and special methods of scientific cognition: synthesis, analysis, induction, deduction, generalization, proving, structural and functional, formal and legal, comparative, theoretical and prognostic. Analysis of the competitive environment at the market of medical services in the countries with developed market economies and in Ukraine demonstrates that business competition at this market, in general, has its own characteristics, which can negatively affect the quality of medical care. Assessing medical services by price and non-price criteria within a competitive environment, the authors of the article make actual the issue of fair access to medical care. The level of socio-economic development and constitutional restrictions on the transformation of medicine in Ukraine induce the feasibility of implementing health insurance in the form of compulsory state social medical insurance.