Sikkut blames underfunding for queues, Joller cites staff shortages

Social Democrat Riina Sikkut and Social Affairs Minister Karmen Joller debated health-care access on ERR’s First Studio programme, with Sikkut citing underfunding and political choices as causes of long treatment queues and Joller warning that more money alone cannot increase services without enough doctors and nurses.

About one-third of voters say access to health care could be the main issue in the next parliamentary elections. Sikkut said health has remained an important concern for years, and that access to help naturally matters when people consider their health a priority.

Joller said her goal as social affairs minister was to ensure people receive health services in time. Sikkut argued that access should be based on medical need and said Estonia lacks workers in some fields, including family medicine and psychiatry, as well as nurses. She also said the country has not funded the full level of medical need in any year.

Joller agreed that staffing is a constraint. She said patients whose condition worsens while they are waiting should contact their family doctor again, and argued that additional funding would not deliver more services without enough health-care workers.

The two also disagreed over hospital contract volumes. Sikkut said they had fallen for three years, while Joller said they had increased, along with the number of appointments and procedures. Sikkut said more training was needed and argued that Estonia, which spends about 7 percent of GDP on health care, could not realistically provide services at lower costs as the population ages. She compared this with an EU average of 10 percent and said more than a fifth of Estonia’s health-care spending came directly from patients.

Joller said health-care funding had increased every year and that the budget had grown by nearly one billion euros over the past decade. She said forecasts pointed to an increase of about 100 million euros annually through 2030, and stressed that funding should be directed where it is needed. She cited e-consultations, which can help prioritise patients according to need, as one way to make better use of health-care staff.