Fri, 27 Mar, 2015 12:08:03 AM FTimes-STT Report, Mar 27  The Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb spoke after holding all party consultation on Sote reform in Helsinki on Thursday. Photo Lehtikuva. A huge task in the reform of the social welfare and health care reform, the so called sote-reform awaits the incoming government.
The Minister of Health and Social Laura Räty and the Minister of Social Services Susanna Huovinen both on Thursday agreed that the sote reform issue should be addressed as soon as the next government takes office.
All the parliamentary parties except the opposition Perussuomalaiset (Finns Party) on Thursday went through the sote reform matter and agreed that reform will be spearheaded through cooperation immediately after the elections.
On the same day, the ministers presented possible funding models of the reform. The models are seen to provide tools for the reform work; but the most important thing is the ability of the new government to make big decisions.
The ministers held that it should be possible to present the reform guidelines in the government programme, and thus advocating merely for the reform model is not enough.
"There will be a big pressure in the next parliamentary term, a very big reform which always entails huge risks; it is important that a common objective could be found immediately in the beginning of the new parliamentary term," said Räty.
The steering group charged with task of deliberating the funding models of the reform came up with five proposals in a period spanning over a year. The group devised five models whose financial impacts were not calculated.
The report revealed the challenging task in which structures of the services had not been finalised.
Minister of Health and Social Laura Räty and Minister of Social Services Susanna Huovinen at the working committee's report release programme on Sote in Helsinki on Thursday. Photo Lehtikuva. The sote reform bill was rejected by the parliamentary constitution committee after it was deemed unconstitutional.
All the five models envisaged could be built around a separate student and occupational health care.
The options in the models provide more or less opportunities to clients, for instance, it increases freedom of choice of service since they are quite general in nature and integrated with each other.
The first model is based on strong service provider which has an elected council and also has the right to levy taxes.
In the second model, the state and municipalities collect the taxes and direct the funding to municipal federations charged with the responsibility of organising the services.
The third option proposes that funding should be collected as is presently done, however, it should be done at a national level, and direct the services towards organizing municipal federations.
In the fourth option presented, the government will collect sote taxes, whereas in the fifth option, citizens would be compelled to have a health insurance in which a private insurance company would be considered as envisaged in the second option proposed.
According to Huovinen, the second model is the closest to the Social Democrats way of thinking. Much, however, depends on how the model will be structured, said Huovinen.
On other hand, Räty said that the Kansallinen Kokoomus (National Coalition Party) wants a people-centred model which would best answer the needs of the citizens.
Having an insurance-based system would, however, be very expensive, concluded the health minister.
Jan Schugk representing the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions - SAK criticized the work of the steering group.
Schugk said the question of how the model would affect the accessibility and sustainability of social and health services were not evaluated.
The managing director of the Federation of Finnish Financial Services Piia-Noora Kauppi said that the work in any case offer the incoming government a good start.
"It is important, that options have been developed as a result of extensive parliamentary and different stakeholders work, even though a common vision of the model is still far away," said Kauppi.
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