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Health reform in Finland: current proposals and unresolved challenges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2016

Richard B. Saltman  and
Juha Teperi
Richard B. Saltman*
Affiliation:
Professor of Health Policy and Management, Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta, USA
Juha Teperi
Affiliation:
Dean, School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
*
*Correspondence to: Richard B. Saltman, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Rollins School of Public Health, 1518 Clifton Rd NE, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The Finnish health care system is widely respected for its pilot role in creating primary-care-led health systems. In the early 1990s, however, a severe economic downturn in Finland reduced public funding and weakened the Finnish system’s deeply decentralized model of health care administration. Recent Bank of Finland projections forecasting several decades of slow economic growth, combined with the impact of an aging population, appear to make major reform of the existing public system inevitable. Over the last several years, political attention has focused mostly on administrative consolidation inside the public sector, particularly integration of health and social services. Current proposals call for a reformed health sector governance structure based on a new meso-level configuration of public administration. In addition, Finland’s national government has proposed replacing the current multi-channel public funding structure (which includes health insurance subsidies for occupational health services) with a single-channel public funding structure. This commentary examines several key issues involved in reforming the delivery structure of the Finnish health care system. It also explores possible alternative strategies to reform current funding arrangements. The article concludes with a brief discussion of implications from this Finnish experience for the wider health reform debate.

Type
Articles
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Health Economics, Policy and Law , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 303 - 319
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© Cambridge University Press 2016 

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