George Rebane
Estonian Health Care. In Viljandi Jo Ann and I were surprised to learn that our friend Bruno, who is a surgeon at the large provincial hospital (pictured on the horizon), is paid less than we pay our yard 
and garden help in Nevada County. The country has a socialized health care system of the kind that our progressive politicians are trying to put in place. Estonia, on the other hand, is currently seeking other solutions.
The system has the usual problems of long wait periods for certain kinds of treatments, difficulty of referral to specialists, and so on. And the situation is getting worse because Estonia trains excellent physicians (e.g. here at the University of Tartu) who are much in demand all over the world where they can enjoy much higher wages relative to their cost of living. Therefore, many of them emigrate and consequently leave the country with marginal staffing levels at hospitals and clinics.
Also the good Dr. Bruno and many others are forced to go to other countries to get timely medical care, especially for those involving procedures that the state declares to be discretionary. It’s always puzzled me how these bureaucrats know what I consider critical and/or necessary to my quality of life. They just sit there at a distance and tell the population what it really needs, and what it doesn’t need – amazing!
Estonian national health insurance adds an employer paid 13% burden to each worker’s base pay. Additionally, each worker pays a 26% flat tax deducted from his paycheck that will be stepped down to 20% in about four years.
It will be interesting to see what these very practical people come up with as they seek to fix their healthcare system (a good summary of which is found here). The respected think tank Cato Institute studies American healthcare as one of its main public policy research areas. They have some information about healthcare solutions here that you don’t see on the evening news. Sometimes it feels that in many areas we in the US are following a trail littered with abandoned and derelict public policies picking and choosing among the worst as we mindlessly mumble the new mantra ‘change’.
Tomorrow we leave Tartu and drive across southern Estonia to the beach resort city of Pärnu.
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