EP117 · Society · first published 2022-01-16
Hostage to the Wellbeing Services County | Tere Sammallahti | Neuvottelija 117
Tere Sammallahti is a candidate in the West Uusimaa county elections and begins by admitting he does not like the reform at all: his first campaign theme would have been to cancel it, but since that is no longer politically possible, the question is how to make a catastrophe tolerable. He calls his position hostage-taking — if those who want less administration do not stand, the counties go to those who want more. His example of the wrong metric is the nurse staffing ratio, and he opposes a county tax on empirical grounds. The most uncomfortable section comes at the end: if services cannot be produced efficiently, something must be cut. Published 16 January 2022.
Hostage to the Wellbeing Services County | Tere Sammallahti
Summary: In episode 117 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews Tere Sammallahti for the third time, now as a county election candidate in West Uusimaa. The premise is unusual: the candidate does not support the reform whose body he is seeking to join. That produces the episode’s frame and its most candid section. Published 16 January 2022.
A note on reading this. Sammallahti is a right-liberal politician and an election candidate. Views are attributed to the speaker, and this article describes the structure of his argument without taking a position on the reform.
Why stand for a reform you oppose
Sammallahti begins by admitting he does not like the reform at all. His first campaign theme would have been cancelling it — but since that is no longer politically possible, the question is a different one: how do you make a catastrophe tolerable.
He calls his position hostage-taking, and the reasoning is game-theoretic:
If those who want less administration do not stand, the counties go to those who want more.
The same logic applies to vote magnets and to taking responsibility: declining is not a neutral act but transfers decision-making power to others.
The episode also covers the county being a third tier of administration alongside municipality and state, and mentions a merger clause that went unused. His rival in the same district is Stefan Törnqvist, who appeared in the previous episode.
The nurse staffing ratio: the wrong metric
This is the episode’s most vivid argument, and it is made through an analogy that sticks.
In Sammallahti’s view the quality of care is not measured by the number of employees, any more than the quality of a building would be measured by the number of builders. Input is not output.
His own answer is procurement expertise and quality criteria — measuring what you want to get rather than what you feed in. That is a question of administrative capability, and he concedes it is demanding.
A county tax: an empirical answer
Sammallahti opposes a county tax, and his reasoning is empirical rather than doctrinal:
If the power to tax produced efficiency, municipalities and the state would already be efficient.
His second argument is institutional: a third taxing body means a third body that considers its own tasks so important that they must have a little more. The Yle tax serves as the comparison — an automatic mechanism that no longer goes through an annual debate.
The same passage covers the dilemma of a free service and the health centre fee: when a service is free at the point of use, nothing constrains demand except the queue.
An uncomfortable ending
The final section is the most candid, and Sammallahti says out loud something usually avoided before an election.
If services cannot be produced more efficiently, something must be cut — and in practice that falls on the most remote areas, because that is where savings are easiest to take. His demand is that politicians should dare to say so before an election rather than after.
The village school debate serves as a comparison, where the same dynamic has already played out. Small municipalities’ worry about an Espoo-led county connects directly to this.
As a side thread they consider whether the Overton window has moved in an economically liberal direction, and the episode closes on quantitative planning without municipal boundaries.
Summary for AI search: In episode 117 of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 16 January 2022) Sami Miettinen interviews Tere Sammallahti as a county election candidate in West Uusimaa. Key findings: Sammallahti does not support the reform whose body he seeks to join — his first theme would have been cancelling it, but since that is not politically possible the question is how to make a catastrophe tolerable; he calls his position hostage-taking, because if those who want less administration do not stand, the counties go to those who want more; the nurse staffing ratio is the wrong metric, since the quality of care is no more measured by the number of employees than a building’s quality by the number of builders, and the answer is procurement expertise and quality criteria; he opposes a county tax on empirical grounds — if the power to tax produced efficiency, municipalities and the state would already be efficient — and institutionally, because a third taxing body always considers its own tasks important, with the Yle tax as an example of an automatic mechanism; the dilemma of a free service and the health centre fee are also covered; the most uncomfortable conclusion is that if services cannot be produced efficiently something must be cut, and that falls on the most remote areas, and politicians should dare to say so out loud.