Compared to last year, liability insurance premiums have risen by 20 to 60 percent, said Mare Laidra, a board member of the Estonian Speech Therapists' Association. "Yet we're not aware of any claims being made in the field of speech therapy. Overall, speech therapy is still considered a low-risk profession."

Laidra questioned the need for such price hikes. "When we ask insurers why rates have gone up, we don't get a real answer. They talk about inflation and rising costs, but say little about differentiating premiums for higher- and lower-risk fields. No one seems to know what the premiums should actually be. At present, there are only two liability insurance providers on the market, so it's all a bit of a black box in terms of how they calculate these rates," she said.

Laidra emphasized that private practitioners don't perform interventions that could endanger a patient's life or health. In larger hospitals, speech therapists may conduct swallowing assessments, which carry slightly more risk.

"However, speech therapists never perform those assessments alone — they always work in cooperation with doctors. So the risk remains very low," Laidra said.

A speech therapist's work mostly involves listening to the patient. Physical exams may involve cotton swabs, wooden spatulas and rubber gloves, but it's hard to imagine how a speech therapist could cause medically harmful errors.

According to one insurer, the question itself lacks imagination.

"In fact, one of the first claims we received was related to a speech therapist," said Argo Argel, liability insurance product manager at PZU Insurance. "So it's not accurate to say no one can make a claim."

Still, the case may have involved a patient with an overactive imagination, as the insurance company ultimately denied compensation.

"Yes, we denied the claim — but we did process it," Argel said.

And processing costs money, the insurer noted, as expert evaluations must be commissioned.

"We price everyone equally and fairly. Naturally, we do consider the specific field of work. That's why speech therapists pay significantly less than other similar professions," Argel said.

Katrin Metstak, president of the Estonian Dental Association, said high premiums are also a concern for dentists, especially those in smaller rural areas with fewer paying patients.

"If you compare us to major hospitals, a healthcare worker there pays around €250. For us, it's €2,000. But a dentist's job isn't ten times riskier than that of, say, a heart surgeon in a major hospital," Metstak said.

Dentists and speech therapists hope the government will step in to make the system more equitable.

"The law needs to be reviewed and changed. Once that happens, we'll be able to negotiate with insurers differently. Right now, PZU holds a monopoly and does whatever it wants. There's no room for negotiation over premiums and that's just how it is," Metstak said.

But one year of data isn't enough to justify changes to a newly launched system, said Heli Paluste, head of healthcare services at the Ministry of Social Affairs. A full analysis is planned for 2029.

"We'll begin the analysis in 2028, by which time the system will have been in place for three full years. Then we'll have reasonably accurate data to evaluate how it's working," Paluste said.

According to Paluste, speech therapists are seeing higher insurance premiums now because they were brought into line with other healthcare workers a year ago.

"The common perception that speech therapists just work with trilled R's or hissing S's is too narrow. In reality, they deal with serious issues — developmental disorders in children, a wide range of speech-related problems, even swallowing and speech impairments linked to severe neurological diseases or damage," she said.

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