Kjell-Magne Rystad, Debate NRK | The state therefore has no faith in the state either

In the last week, the health minister’s private health insurance in his own company has been one of the talking points.

On Thursday evening, Fredrik Solvang tackled the matter in NRK’s ​​”Debatten”.

Already at the handover of the keys a week ago, the Minister of Health was asked about private health insurance.

Now it was Solvang who wanted to drill into this.

Chatted away

“It is the welfare state that should be the best insurance we have,” replied Vestre. Otherwise, he had no comment on the choices for his own company and would not otherwise moralize about those who buy private health insurance.

Even though the government platform says that the government must be against it.

“I will ensure that the public health service is so good that there will be no need to take out insurance”, Vestre continued a little later.

So then so.

And so he continued hammering home the same message with almost the same words. For a full ten minutes before more people were allowed to join the debate.

Vestre is a man who likes to chat. And he did.

But what he had to say could have been said in ten seconds. Not ten minutes.

When Solvang finally finished questioning Vestre, without getting anything new out of him, it was refreshing to have an interview with someone who really enjoyed private health insurance.

A happy thing, right?

Mechanic Kjell Sigmundsen from Øyer, could say that his pain had been reduced by 80-90 per cent by using the health insurance he had. This also allowed him to work instead of waiting in the health care queue.

A happy thing, then.

Or?

Had Sigmundsen only contributed to “stealing” health resources from the public sector. That was the next turn in the debate.

Here, the fronts between the right and left sides were well known. Aleris CEO Anita Tunold, parliamentary representative for the Conservative Party, Tone Trøen, and director of information at Finans Norge, Tom Staavi, were, as expected, positive about private health insurance.

SV deputy leader Marian Hussein stood on the opposite side, of course.

Nevertheless, there was no shouting trench debate on this issue. And it was good.

Everyone agreed that the public health queues must be reduced, but not how.

Tried leaning to the left

The right-wing believes that the private healthcare industry is more efficient than the public healthcare system, while the SV deputy leader therefore believes that it only “steals” resources from the public sector.

Where the left sees a zero-sum distribution game, the right sees the opportunity to bake the social pie bigger. As much as five to six times bigger, the Aleris boss seemed to think, or at least five to six times as many treatments when it happens privately.

SV deputy leader Hussein, on the other hand, did not want to relate to the individual elections. “We must prioritize in the public sector and not pretend that we can only bake the cake bigger”, she continued.

So quite a big gap between the wings in how reality is seen.

“There won’t be any more physiotherapists with privatisation,” Vestre interjected, in an attempt to lean a little to the left, while he was still in the middle.

Nevertheless, an enlightening debate

Cackling from familiar, locked-in positions is boring.

The most interesting thing was that the debate was actually also somewhat enlightening in that the focus was on the facts.

In the last 20 years, the scope of private health insurance has increased almost tenfold.

When SV was in government, there was a fourfold increase.

Such facts underline the importance of the topic.

It is also interesting that a number of state enterprises, including Folketrygdfondet, buy private health insurance for their employees.

The state therefore has no faith in the state either.

It was probably best for Vestre that he didn’t get to talk much after the first ten minutes.

Best for the debate too. The whole framework for the debate was that Vestre is torn between its own company’s choice and its own government’s policy.

Carrying on like this is tiring. But Vestre remained standing.

Read more from Kjell-Magne Rystad