Pihlajalinna shareholders are once again in line for dividends through partially questionable means. A practitioner at Pihlajalinna billed 4,600 euros for a 20-minute mole removal after noticing that the payer was the insurance company Pohjantähti. I assume a certain percentage of this visit also goes to the company and its shareholders. Apparently, the doctor’s assumption was that even a completely unreasonable bill would pass through the insurance company’s automated process. This may be an individual case, but is it just the tip of the iceberg? Privacy laws etc. effectively prevent more detailed analyses.
In the public sector, such a mole removal would have cost perhaps around a hundred euros at cost price.
If anyone still claims that private healthcare is an efficient arrangement that saves taxpayers’ money, the matter should be considered more closely from this perspective as well. With these scam prices, I’m not surprised that I myself now pay over 1,000 euros per year for my insurance, and every year the price rises by more than 10%. This is not a sensible use of money at a societal level.