Sote reform to be delayed till 2020: PM

Prime Minister Juha Sipilä on Wednesday said the implementation of the social and healthcare (Sote) reform will be delayed till 2020, reported the national broadcaster Yle.

The reform was earlier scheduled to be implemented in 2019.

The prime minister’s remarks came at a press conference following a unanimous decision of the parliamentary constitutional committee on June 29 rejecting the government’s healthcare plan.

The government is considering how the constitutional problems raised regarding the Sote reform would affect its implementation schedule.

Sipilä also confirmed that the reform will not take place during the tenure of the present government, as the parliamentary elections will be held in 2019.

“The ‘sote’ and provincial reforms will be brought to fruition. The necessary corrections will be made and the reforms will take effect on January 1, 2020, and provincial elections will be held in October 2018,” said Yle quoting a Twitter post of Sipilä.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Sipilä rejected the opposition’s demands to redesign the law via a cross-party parliamentary committee, said the Yle report.

Earlier, in a unanimous decision on June 29, the constitutional committee asked the government to find another way to arrange “freedom of choice” for patients.

However, the committee did not cancel the principle that patients could in the future choose between private and public service providers, at public expense and at the same rates.

The denied government bill had been based on the idea that public services would compete on an equal basis with private healthcare and should therefore be turned into companies for reasons of transparency. As independent legal entities, they could have gone bankrupt, if their business did not go well.

Public health experts in Finland have welcomed the surprise decision of the parliamentary constitutional committee to dismiss a government plan to transform public primary healthcare providers into commercial companies.