Everyone is complaining here that it takes too long to see your doctor in your public healthcare center. You normally wait for two weeks, at least, before they find time, except in emergencies!
When you go to a private healthcare center things are a little better. They only work office hours and most of the times are booked up until next week, and it will cost you €200 plus another €200 for laboratory fees! That is a big amount to pay especially if you are a single mother, a low-income worker, a pensioner or have a family.
We all know that there are not enough doctors in the public sector, and we are now reading stories that the public sector is employing part-time and full-time doctors from the private sector with monthly wages between €12 000 and €20 000!
This situation has been getting worse for years and this new government fervently believes that they have the solution. Instead of increasing training for more doctors the fools and bigger fools running this government keep on shouting that the lack of doctors in the public sector can be alleviated by working with private sector healthcare companies to employ more doctors.
The Prime Minister and his colleagues seem to believe that new doctors pop up by magic like that rabbit being drawn from a hat at a magic show!
There are a fixed number of doctors in Finland and their numbers do not increase rapidly because the Doctors Association has lobbied hard for decades to limit the intake of new student to train as doctors.
It takes 7 to 8 years to train a new doctor, so that path to increase the supply has been blocked very successfully!
Foreign doctors do arrive on our shores from low income countries but the numbers are limited because of tough certification requirements and language skills… and why a rich country like Finland should be recruiting doctors from low-income countries is beyond comprehension.
The result is self-evident, like every economics’ student knows, when demand increases for a product with a limited supply the price increases.
This is something that the Prime Minister and his hopeless Minister of Finance just do not understand, or do not what understand – the latter reason is more probable because doctors are the biggest fans of the present government!
Drawing: A doctor visiting a senile old man and discussing his verdict with the patient’s wife. Wood engraving by C.E. Brock, 1902. Wikipedia
