Painful admission: patients are denied compensation for travel for treatment
In 2025, at least in five regions — the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, the Kamchatka and Khabarovsk Territories, as well as in Bashkiria, patients with cancer were refused compensation for the cost of travel to and from the place of treatment. However, there are refusals for patients with other diseases in seven regions. Experts point out that the reason is the lack of funds for such expenses. How patients still seek to pay for travel to medical centers in regional capitals or Moscow is described in the Izvestia article.
Where patients are not compensated for travel expenses
In 2025, patients with cancer were denied compensation for the cost of travel to and from treatment in at least five regions, medical lawyers of the Hello! patient association told Izvestia. According to them, cases of refusals this year were registered in Irkutsk and Murmansk regions, Bashkiria, as well as Khabarovsk and Kamchatka territories.
A patient from the Kamchatka Territory, on condition of anonymity, said that she had to travel from her village to Moscow for treatment.
— For health reasons, I do not work. My husband works two jobs, we have loans. The region of residence does not pay for my travel, despite having all the necessary documents. The cost of tickets is about 40-50 thousand rubles in both directions, and this is without taking into account the road from the village to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the cost of living in another city," she complained.
The woman contacted the regional Ministry of Health with a request to explain why she was not being paid for her trip, but received no response. Izvestia also asked the agency and the prosecutor's office. According to the order of the Ministry of Health of the Kamchatka region, all residents registered in the region have the right to compensation for the cost of travel for treatment.
And in Bashkiria, a single mother is forced to travel to another city for treatment with a child who has been diagnosed with cancer. She doesn't have enough money for regular trips, so she organized a fundraiser through a charity foundation. According to the woman, the local Ministry of Health referred her to other departments. Now she plans to apply there.
According to the decree of the Government of Bashkortostan on the procedure for reimbursement of travel expenses, the cost of travel to and from the place of treatment for a child under 18 and one accompanying person is compensated from funds allocated to the regional Ministry of Health. The fact of the trip must be confirmed with travel tickets — in a reserved carriage. When traveling in a compartment or on a flight, a certificate of the ticket price in the reserved seat should be attached to the documents.
In the Murmansk region, parents of children from Monchegorsk are denied compensation for medical treatment in Moscow if they travel by plane rather than train.
— After chemotherapy, the child's body becomes more vulnerable to infections, so we try not to stress him once again. After all, serious complications may arise that will accelerate death with our diagnosis," said one of the mothers of a sick child from the region. — But the local authorities refuse to compensate us for the cost of tickets, citing the lack of funds in the regional budget for these purposes.
According to the decree of the administration of the city of Monchegorsk, compensation is subject only to the cost of paying the cost of travel to and from the place of treatment by rail and public transport, except for taxis.
According to parents of patients from the Murmansk region, the most effective way to receive compensation from the region for travel is to contact the prosecutor's office. So, in June 2025, after the intervention of the prosecutor's office of the Murmansk region, the family of a disabled child from the city of Polyarnye Zori was compensated for trips to the National Medical Research Center of Endocrinology in Moscow for treatment.
A patient from the Irkutsk region, Tatiana, told Izvestia that she was diagnosed with cancer in 2023. It is the third year that she has been traveling for treatment from the city of Bodaibo (located 1,400 km from Irkutsk) to the capital of the region.
— Until the beginning of 2025, I traveled to the Irkutsk regional center about once every six months, and it cost me 50-60 thousand rubles. But in the spring of 2024, there were interruptions with the pertuzumab-based drug, I did not receive my prescribed therapy for more than six months, and serious complications arose. Since January 2025, I have to go for treatment every two to three weeks. Since then, I have spent more than 580,000 rubles on travel," she said.
According to the woman, the local authorities have been refusing for two years to compensate for travel expenses for medical treatment — in 2023, she received such compensation.
Izvestia sent a request to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Social Development of the Irkutsk region, but no response had been received at the time of publication. But the editorial office has at its disposal the response of the Ministry of Social Development, Guardianship and Guardianship of the Irkutsk region to Tatiana's appeal.
"Due to the excess of the average per capita income of two times the minimum subsistence level established in the regions of the Far North of the Irkutsk region, it was decided to refuse to provide you with this measure of social support," it says.
Each region independently sets the rules for paying compensation to patients for travel to and from the place of treatment, said Yulia Levkina, lawyer at the Hello! Association.
Izvestia got acquainted with the decree of the government of the Irkutsk region on such payments — they are provided to disabled children and their accompanying persons, patients with tuberculosis, malignant neoplasms, pregnant women and women in labor. There is indeed an income restriction in the region's explanation from July 2025.
Izvestia sent requests to the local Ministry of Health and the prosecutor's Office, as well as the Ministry of Health and the Social Fund, with a request to comment on the refusals of patients to compensate for travel to the place of treatment.
How to travel with other diagnoses
Izvestia made sure that parents of young patients and adult patients regularly contact the prosecutor's office. For example, the parents of a disabled child from Mari El were compensated for travel to the place of treatment only after the local prosecutor's office appealed to the court.
"It has been established that the applicant's four-year-old son needs rehabilitation in a medical center outside the region. Taking into account the health condition of the minor, the legal representatives, at their own expense, delivered the child to a medical institution in the Krasnodar Territory," the website of the Prosecutor's office of the republic says.
In Komi, Tatarstan, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, Yakutia, as well as the Rostov and Novosibirsk regions, compensation in some cases was paid precisely after the intervention of the prosecutor's office, Izvestia found out by analyzing the website of the prosecutor's offices of the regions and the Prosecutor General's Office.
For example, in December 2024, a minor patient from the Novosibirsk region was prescribed high-tech treatment, but in order to deliver the child to a medical center in Moscow, the parents had to spend 52 thousand rubles. Information about the need for treatment and reimbursement of travel to the local Ministry of Health was received untimely.
"Based on the results of the audit, the head of the institution received a proposal to eliminate violations of the law," the Moscow Prosecutor's office said on its website.
In the Murmansk region, in March 2025, a resident of the Kandalaksha district with a disability of the second group obtained compensation for travel to a place of treatment outside the region. The man was refused due to the fact that the documents for the specified period were accepted until January 31, and he submitted them later. But there is no such reason in the legislation for refusing to pay for travel, so the prosecutors submitted a submission to the head of the municipal administration.
And in Komi, the Syktyvkar prosecutor's office conducted an inspection on the appeal of a local resident about the violation of her rights and the rights of her child. The woman and her two-year-old son were being treated at the Russian Children's Clinical Hospital, as the necessary medical procedures are not carried out in Komi.
After returning to her region of residence, she sent an application to the local branch of the Social Fund for compensation of expenses for traveling with the child to the place of his treatment and back, but she was refused due to the lack of a protocol from the commission of the Ministry of Health of the Komi Republic on the need for this treatment for the child.
But in the end, the court ruled that the regional branch of the Social Fund should compensate her for travel expenses — regional legislation on social support does not provide for the absence of a commission protocol as a reason for refusing compensation.
In addition, according to the Clear Morning cancer care service, in the Chelyabinsk and Kemerovo regions, as well as in the Altai Territory, travel expenses are not compensated if the patient is flying by plane. Patients are also denied compensation due to their lack of disability. This is the situation, for example, in the Krasnodar Territory.
— Sometimes patients are also rejected because they refused the social package. But they may not know about it themselves, since the medical organization did not initially explain its advantages to them," the service added.
As a result, in addition to the disease, patients are forced to struggle with the bureaucratic system, said Olga Goldman, head of the Clear Morning service.
—And this can lead to the fact that people who cannot afford to move closer to the center of the region will fade away faster and live less than they could," she said.
Failure to compensate patients for travel for treatment undermines their financial and moral condition, said Mikhail Laskov, an oncologist and founder of the Dr. Laskov Clinic. This negatively affects their health, because they are under constant stress, he stressed.
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