The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen

Author:Anu Partanen [Partanen, Anu]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

AN AMERICAN IN FINLAND

Everywhere in the world people have complaints about their health-care system, and even the best-performing nations still need improvement. The journalist T. R. Reid, as he describes traveling the world studying different approaches to health care, quotes a Princeton policy analyst named Tsung-Mei Cheng. Having observed the difficulties of creating effective health-care systems around the globe, Cheng came up with what she calls her three “Universal Laws of Health Care Systems.” They are as follows: “1. No matter how good the health care in a particular country, people will complain about it. 2. No matter how much money is spent on health care, the doctors and hospitals will argue that it is not enough. 3. The last reform always failed.”

Many Finns consider the Finnish health-care system a disaster. The health-care perks that salaried Finns get from their employers allow them to visit primary care physicians without any wait. This leaves the unemployed, the self-employed, or retired Finns to face longer waits at public clinics. In addition private care that is subsidized by the public system has ensured that Finns with money can buy their way into immediate elective surgery more quickly than the less well-off. By American standards the prices of private care in Finland are not outrageous, but Finns who can afford them do get better access to care than those who can’t.

An American might think that it is only right to reward people for their hard work, and to give people incentives to get a job with benefits, not to mention to earn a salary good enough to be able to pay for better health care if they want to. In Finland today, however, the fact that such trends might be starting to emerge is generally considered a disgrace. While there are Finns who think a more libertarian and private-sector approach would serve Finland better in health care, as in other areas of life, most Finns believe that their success as a nation in the twenty-first century demands that real equality of opportunity be extended to every member of society no matter what, including in the form of a strong national public health-care system.

To ensure that access to health care in Finland remains equitable, the Finnish government has instituted rules shortening the amount of time patients might have to wait before seeing a doctor. Now all nonemergency cases must be evaluated within three days of a patient contacting a public health clinic, and access to a general practitioner or specialist for nonemergency care must follow no later than ninety days after the initial evaluation. Elective surgery must be scheduled within six months. Needless to say someone who needs emergency care or is suffering from acute pain can always walk into an emergency room anywhere in Finland, for a copay of less than forty-five dollars. In addition the Finnish government is in the process of pushing through changes in health-care administration and funding that would create a more centralized system, in an effort to improve both efficiency and equality.

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