Nurse Resignations: A Chance To Privatise Health Care

An MP for the Independence Party believes the mass resignations of Iceland’s nurses is a great opportunity to start privatising health care.

In a column published by Fréttablaðið, Independence Party MP Sigríður Á. Andersen argued that the current crisis in the health care system could be better dealt with by private firms.

“An increase in private companies in all kinds of health care doesn’t just bring with it an opportunity for doctors but also nurses and other health care workers,” she wrote. “These opportunities outside of the public sector need to increase.”

Sigríður maintains that a growing private health care sector would increase competitiveness, and encourage the public system to do better.

This is not the first time this idea has been floated in Iceland. In 2013, Minister of Health Kristján Þór Júlíusson – also of the Independence Party – brought the idea up in parliament under the auspices of “privately managed care”, rather than total privatisation. The following year, however, he suggested that private firms could run a new hospital.