General Discussion

Sweden’s taxpayers are fine with footing the bill for themselves, but no country’s medical system can financially survive a deluge of “medical tourists,” who travel there specifically to get cost-free (to them) medical care. And nor should it. Sweden’s residents are heavily taxed, not just “the rich.” Among some of the advantages of that is that with the money that comes in, the government picks up the bill for most treatment and medicine. It may be offered at little or no charge to the patient, but it is not free. It is just financed differently. I promise you that if you want to order a construction firm to build you a hospital somewhere, and hire dozens or hundreds of doctors and nurses, no one will do it “for free.” Even in Sweden, construction workers, nurses and doctors need to eat, buy clothing and pay rent.

If the USA is EVER going to step away from our haphazard system of impoverishing many people who need serious medical care, it will have to shift the cost away from those receiving the care to the general population, i.e. higher taxes. Since that is usually a death sentence to the candidacy of anyone running for national office in the USA, it will be the skillful politician indeed who can come up with a formula to sell THAT to a majority of voters. For all that America has suffered under the Republicans, we have yet to have our Ådalen ‘31.