Health Norway has major challenges. Nevertheless, the government is investigating how we can get fewer tools in the coffers.
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Ole Erik Almlid
Managing director, NHO
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Karita Bekkemellem
Managing director, NHO Geneo
It benefits no one, neither patients nor users.
Debate
This is a debate post. Opinions in the text are the responsibility of the writer.
The government has set up a public committee to investigate how commercial operations can be carried out in various tax-funded welfare services, and to present a separate zero-profit model for each such sector.
This means that the government will investigate the possibility of getting rid of legally established companies. These are companies that employ over 100,000 workers – within health and welfare.
Many claim that when private companies provide services, the money goes to profit and not to the users. This is pointless. The users do not get more money from the public carrying out the services themselves. Users don’t see this money – they see the services and help they get.
If companies can deliver the same service at the same cost, it makes no difference to the users. If they can deliver at a lower cost, it only means that the public sector can offer more or better services to users because the money stretches further.
There will be less innovation
It is also claimed that there is super profit, i.e. an abnormally high profit based on public goods, in companies that operate within the welfare sector. That’s a fascinating argument, men The Welfare Services Committee determined in 2020 that there is no super profit. The operating margin is 5.3 per cent, and the average for non-financial companies, excluding resource companies, is 5.7 per cent.
It is a shame that the government uses taxpayers’ funds to investigate zero-profit models and how the public can phase out commercial actors within welfare. It will most likely reduce the rate of innovation within the welfare sector and reduce the availability of requested welfare services.
No report prepared by Menon Economics on behalf of NHO shows that the phasing out of companies in welfare will affect one in three district municipalities and 20 per cent of all the country’s municipalities.
Allows himself to be pressured by Red and SV
We expect that when the committee thoroughly examines the issues, it will become clear that all the consequences of this policy are something we do not want. But already now, the energy and expertise should have been directed at the real challenges in the health area.
We will be more elderly in relation to people in work in the coming years. We must then strengthen the welfare services at the same time that the tax revenue may fall.
There will be a shortage of labor in the health sector, but also in other sectors that we depend on to start value creation that can replace falling oil and gas revenues. This means that there is a critical need for innovation in all areas, including in the health sector. Both in terms of technology and organization of the services.
NHO and the private healthcare companies would like to discuss how we can contribute to solving this. But precisely in this situation, the government parties have been pressured by Rødt and SV to investigate how we can get fewer tools in the coffers!