Dental care in Finland

Once you get your Kela card you are entitled to some of the social security benefits. One of those is right to use health care services. I happen to be the card holder therefore I decided to see the dentist finally. It turned out that waiting time is half a year! Horribly long queue. I signed up since the only other choice I had was private dental care which even if partly subsided by state is still really expensive. In case your tooth hurts there is a solution for that in form of dental emergency system that you can usually get an appointment the same day.

Back to my experiences. I finally managed to wait that half a year and got everything fixed in two visits. I was pleased that this is over - it wasn't very pleasurable experience. Not for long I could enjoy having all teeth fixed - after one month one of the fillings fell out. Luckily I managed get to the dentist the same day, but it turned out that I had to pay once more for fixing the same tooth! Outrageous.

When complaining to my friend about that she started to doubt if the public health care is really less expensive and isn't it reasonable to use private dental care. I calculated all of the expenses (you pay separately for coming to the dentist, material, anaesthetics etc.) and it turned out that actually private cost could be very similar. So despite I pay taxes I think I will use private dental care only. I hope they don't charge their clients for fixing the same tooth twice...