Soviet health policies during the 1970s and 1980s proposed preventive and primary care programs but lacked effective strategies to promote them administratively within the existing medical delivery system. Before Perestroika, Soviet health policy promoted medical care, allocating resources that emphasized an increase in supply, the volume of hospital beds, and the number of physicians and curative resources as the primary factors for optimizing public health. Rigid central health planning and budgeting, pharmaceutical shortages, management problems, and patient dissatisfaction were not recognized by the USSR Ministry of Health as factors contributing to declining population health status.