A physician in a health care centre in Espoo in February 2020. The Finnish government has sought to shorten waiting times in the public health care sector by raising the reimbursement for private health care services from 8 to 30 euros per appointment. According to YLE, the raise has hardly had any impact on the number of appointments in the private sector, despite the government more than doubling its spending on the reimbursement. (Hanna Matikainen – Lehtikuva)
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THE GOVERNMENT of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) has spent tens of millions of euros in taxpayer money to raise the reimbursements paid to private medical practices by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), reports YLE.
The reimbursements were raised from 8 to 30 euros per appointment at the beginning of the year in an attempt to encourage the use of private services and shorten waiting times in the public sector.
YLE on Monday reported that although government spending on the reimbursements surged by 260 per cent, or 31 million euros, year-on-year to 50.5 million euros between January and July, appointments at private medical practices only crept up by 0.7 per cent, or 13,000, to roughly two million.
Also Kela has reported that the number of people who have claimed reimbursements for appointments at private practices has only risen by about a per cent following the bump in the reimbursement.
The initial data suggest that the reform has been unsuccessful, viewed experts interviewed by the public broadcasting company.
Mika Kortelainen, a professor of health economics at the University of Turku, described the initial results as “rather depressing,” reminding that the use of private medical services would have to increase significantly to shorten waiting times in the public sector.
“Expanding Kela reimbursements in the way that it was done doesn’t seem even close to being a successful policy decision in light of these numbers, quite the opposite,” echoed Petri Böckerman, a professor of health economics at the Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics.
Both Böckerman and Kortelainen estimated that despite the reimbursement raise, the group of people using private medical services remains fairly limited for reasons including the relatively high own contribution and lack of familiarity with private services. A YLE analysis similarly reveals that the reimbursements have been claimed primarily in high-income neighbourhoods, such as Westend, Espoo.
The Finnish government is nevertheless intent on raising the reimbursement further at the start of next year – from 30 to 50 euros per appointment with a general practitioner – in an attempt to increase appointments in the private sector by 10–20 per cent. The two professors argued that data from the first seven months of the year, as well as experiences from earlier years, provide no justification for the mooted raise.
Data from past decades indicate that adjustments to the reimbursement have no correlation with the use of private medical services.
“Given how limited the change has been [this year compared with last], it seems pretty unlikely that these goals could be met even if the reimbursement was raised from 30 to 50 euros,” commented Kortelainen.
Also the Finnish Medical Association has expressed its opposition to the raise, viewing that the reimbursements would predominantly trickle into the pockets of high-income earners.
If it turns out that their scepticism was warranted, the reimbursement increase would mean that taxpayer money is being used to cover a growing share of health care costs for people who would be using private medical services regardless of the reimbursement.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
