> The reason is that employers are mandated to provide some kind of health insurance to employees Even many Finns don't understand that this is not correct. Em

> The reason is that employers are mandated to provide some kind of health insurance to employees Even many Finns don't understand that this is not correct. Employers are not mandated to provide any kind of general health care. They must take precautions to protect you from work-related health risks. So for IT workers a physiotherapist checking that your are sitting in a good position would probably be enough. In a mine or steel work it would be a bit more. When you get sick and go to your company health care doctor, that is a voluntary part of your employment contract, in no way mandated by law. One explanation given in the public uses to be: Employers don't want to wait for employees to queue in public health care forever, they want then to return to work soon. Even that explanation does not sound very convincing to me. After all the average flu is over in a week if see a doctor and in seven days if you don't. As an employer I would not voluntarily pay significant money for it if I hadn't to for one reason or another. See also my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37199110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37199110 , it's a really weird, historically grown cost-sharing model that cannot be explained by legal obligations.