Wednesday, May 04, 2016

Sweden Privatizing?

Sweden has long been pointed to as an exemplar of how nationalized health care schemes models can work effectively. Never mind that (at least until recently) that was due primarily to the homogeneity of the population; it worked.

Or did it?

Turns out that "nearly [o]ne in ten Swedes now has private health insurance,” with rising policy demand extending to half a million Swedes and growing throughout the 9.5 million living in the country
."

Interestingly, most of them enjoy what we call ESI, or Employer Sponsored Insurance, and the trend line seems to be accelerating:



So what do you suppose is fueling this upsurge?

As (almost) always: wait times. As we've noted on numerous occasions, all nationalized health care systems ration care, and most of that rationing is accomplished through the use of long wait times, aka attrition. Still doubting that?

Exhibit A:

"Swedish health authorities have come under criticism over the death of a woman whose repeated calls to emergency services were ignored because she was still able to talk."

That's from 4 long years ago. Doesn't look like SvenCare©'s had much improvement.
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