The report below was published in a newletter: "Notes from FFE- May 2004" [The Foundation for Economic Education]. It varies little from my observations three decades ago.

The report entitled "The Government Dream and The Soviet Reality" was written by Anna Ebeling, a former Russian Citizen. Her words are shown within quotation marks.

"In 1917, like everything else, medical services were nationalized by the new Socialist government. Gradually, small medical practices disappeared and a network of big factory-like hospitals and out-patient clinics began to appear."

"One of the greatest myths about the Soviet Union was its supposed equality for all. No society was so divided into privileged groups and classes as was the Soviet society".

"Special hospitals were created all around the Soviet Union. They were reserved for members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Council of Ministers, the local and regional Party elites and so forth.
These 'servants of the people', as a result,received a qualitatively different level of medical care than the masses. The privileged few had access not only to Soviet-made drugs and medications but also to Western European and American medicines and equipment which could never be within reach of the 'proletarian' patient."

For the others,"...hospital wards were crowded and far from antiseptically clean. Anesthetics and pain-killers were frequently unavailable [sold on the black-market??,Director's comment]'
. The crying of patients in pain were sometimes heard from outside a hospital by passersby.
Indifferent and often hostile nurses and orderlies had to be bribed to change a patient's bedpan or to provide ordinary attention that any American would take for granted during a stay in the hospital."

"Connections, bribes, class, gender and ethnicity heavily determined who were admitted into and graduated from medical shools throughout the Soviet Union. Thus, the supplies of hospitals, physicians, medical equipment and pharmaceutcals all became victims of socialist planning and political priorities just like everything else in the 'workers paradise'."