Universalism in flux – Welfare profit-makers’ views towards the institution of welfare universalism

In recent decades, the growing influence of profit-making in Finnish healthcare and social services has affected a core institution of the Nordic welfare state – welfare universalism. This study investigates elite views concerning this institution. Drawing on new institutional theory, we analysed qualitative interviews conducted with 22 Finnish owners and managers of private care companies who have earned significant income or wealth in the healthcare and social service sectors. The findings revealed that despite healthcare being framed as an acceptable profit-making domain, interviewees considered universal coverage for and access to basic education and healthcare as normative, established and culturally legitimate forms of universalism. Conversely, interviewees responded to universal social security benefits with strong resistance and recommendations for normative and regulative change. Our analysis shows that Finnish welfare profit-makers construct clear hierarchies between different services traditionally positioned at the core of the universal Nordic model, and their normative assessments of welfare universalism appear to reflect the logic of Finnish welfare policy reforms, which makes them appear rational and morally legitimate. In other words, the interviewees’ understanding of universalism as a normative institution aligns with what is currently possible or not in the regulatory setting of the Finnish welfare state.