Do we have a good healthcare system?

Our daughter had a minor hand injury at basketball practice and we took her to a doctor to check nothing was broken. We could have used the public service - which in generic is considered to be good. Yes we have the system extremely good comparing to US but having experience from the Belgium system, I can say the public healthcare in Finland is nothing to write home about.

If you go to the emergency, you normally need to wait anything from about an hour up. Since we were talking about x-ray and sophisticated hand bones we decided to use the insurance and went to the private doctor.

Directly to a specialist doctor, x-ray, 2nd talk with the doctor and out via the cashier. From start to end it took about an hour and doctor's time was used for ~20 minutes.

Cheap?

Nooooo, x-ray 93 Euros and the doctor fee 75 Euros. The social security system covers 31 Euros from that, but the rest is up to you to take care of. Or the insurance like in our case.

Here is some more price info for you:
Taking a taxi at normal weekday around 5 pm is not a cheap trip - not to talk about night time. Actually taking a taxi in Finland is never cheap. Before the car starts, the meter shows 5.10 Euros and after 13 km trip, lasting 21 minutes, the total cost was 29.70 Euros. I do support deregulating the strictly limited taxi licence system - which of course all the taxi drivers are hanging on to.

At night time the cost example is 22 euros that a 5.3 km trip costs around midnight - including the 5.20 Euros we had to pay extra for the 8 minutes the driver was waiting for us. Naturally the option would have been to go out and wait for the taxi in the middle of the night in -5 C degrees... At night time the cost for starting the engine is 8 Euros.

But you can always call a taxi where you can sing karaoke!

However, I don't wish to go to the Swedish model where quality and wild competition can turn things upside down...

The quality is mixed and the competition can take the price extremely high like in Malmö train station. If you wish to get a ride for about 3 km trip, prepare to pay even 20 Euros - if they even take you for such a short trip.

So is our health care or taxi system good or not?
I really don't know...