I’m an American living in Sweden with my Swedishfiance. And one of the topics that I get asked most about from my American friends and familyis about the Swedish healthcare system. And in a recent video comparing us Sweden which you canwatch here. Click the link now to watch it. We received a lot of questions and observations aboutwhat the differences with the health system is Sweden versus america. Yeah and when I wasdeciding to move to Sweden from the united states one of the things that I was most curiousabout was the Swedish healthcare system. So we thought that we would create a videocomparing the Swedish healthcare system versus the American one. We’ll explain how theSwedish healthcare system labor, the costs, the pros and cons, and our experiences in boththe American and Swedish healthcare systems. And lastly we’ll let you decide which one you prefer.To start I think it’s pretty fair to say that most Americans are not satisfied with healthcare inthe united states or not satisfied with the costs. In fact 6 out of 10 Americans say the health caresystem is in a crisis position or has major questions. I mean that’s a lot if you think about it, six out of ten.And of course like everything else in the us right now, it’s really differentbetween the two political parties. Republicans are slightly more satisfied but still merely 44% orabout four out of ten republicans are satisfied with the u.s. Healthcare expenditures. So it’s veryclear that healthcare costs in the united states are just not inexpensive for most people, orat least that’s the way Americans perceive it. What’s interesting is the majority ofAmericans believe that the healthcare should be a responsibility of the government. Yeah thatwas actually certainly surprising to me as well. So 56 or a majority of Americans say that yesthe government should be responsible for health insurance so authority responsibilityfor health insurance. Isn’t that socialism or socialist medicine. Well I guess it sort ofis. But it’s not good to use that expression because Americans are so unnerved by the word socialistor socialism. I is not like the relevant recommendations of that.I don’t want the government picking what I can andcannot do. If everybody has something for free who’s going to pay for it? Okay what if peoplepay for it by taxes? What do “youre thinking about” that well that’s going to increase. Do you like topay taxes? And it kind of shapes gumption right if you think about it. The u.s was locked in a4 0-year cold war with the union of soviet socialist republics after world war ii that generation and even my contemporary is sort ofindoctrinated from the media, from their institutions, from culture, that anything progressive or socialismis bad. We are living in an era marked by the growth of socialism, it’s basic godless philosophylying grime it’s goal of world conquest it’s an international crime conspiracy. So is Swedishhealthcare socialist and if so how does it make? Swedish healthcare is universal and decentralized.All citizens have access to healthcare. Responsibility lies with the regional councilsand municipal governments. Medical care is handled mainly through local health centers calledboard vrdcentrals.Am I declaring that freedom? Yeah vrdcentral and that’s basically the firstplace you go and visit when you have some sort of medical question. You go to vrdcentral for issueslike sore throat, urinary illnes, allergy, dizziness, back ache and chronic illness. Thevrdcentral is where most people go first to see a general practitioner and if it is necessary to areferral. Or what in Sweden they call a remiss the practitioner there can refer you to aspecialist such as like a dermatologist a stomach doctor, a honcho doctor. And so on all right so howmuch times all this cost? One common error is that healthcare in Sweden is free, which ofcourse absolutely no truth to the rumors. Yeah we pay taxes to the local government which funds the health care. That’s atopic for a different video. We won’t get into it, but I can securely say that when I was living incalifornia I was paying a very similar tax rate to what I am in Sweden now.So it’s not actuallyreally that expensive. Medical rewards are covered and have a ceiling. Prescription medications havea fee ceiling and patients never pay more than 285 us dollars in a single time. The average costof a primary care visit is about 18 to 36 dollars. And the cost of a specialist including mentalhealth services costs around 26 dollars to 45 the cost of hospitalization includingpharmaceuticals cannot exceed 12 dollars a day healthcare services including immunizations andcancer screenings are completely free and have no co-payments additionally medical services are freefor all the people under the age of 18. So what about dental rates? dental costs is the thing thatactually surprised me the most because in the us it’s very expensive. And as we’ll attend later mostpeople in the us don’t actually tour the dentist more than formerly per year. In Sweden 100 of dentalcare for people under the age of 23 is completely free, and when people are turns the age of 23 thegovernment remunerations them annual aids of about 72% for dental expenses.And the prices of dentalwork in Sweden are not that expensive. So for example coming a tooth removed is about $115. Cleaning and a root canal can expense around $380. So let’s say you have a sore throat andgo to the vrdcentral for a scrutiny. $18. And while you’re there you too get animmunization and a cancer screening, both are free. The next day you go on a ski trip-up andyou’re going downhill really fast you lose control you run into a tree. And you get horribly horriblyinjured.You need to be airlifted via helicopter to a hospice. Costs $130. You spend five daysin the hospital which is about $ 60 dollars for the total stay. The doctor prescribes you medicinethat you need to make daily for a year. Well the ultimate peak expenditure for that would be $ 285 usdollars. After you leave the hospital you need some is currently working on your teeth because you skied intoa tree. The dental work overhead twenty thousand kronor which is about $2400 u.s. dollars but you arereimbursed eighty five percentage. Which means that that would be $ 2055 back. Seeing the dentist visitonly $366 in total. So for the hospitalization, the airlift, the drugs, thecancer screening, the immunization, the dental manipulate you’re looking at a stately totalof $855 us dollars and that’s pretty shocking. I mean that is not with any private insurancethat is just the government state-run healthcare. And for example to compare apples to apples in theus and airlift is something like $ 20000 US dollars after policy. Before we go any further we justlike to say that if you’re enjoying this video you can help us out by click that like button, thathelps the youtube algorithm and pictures our video to more people, and if you want to see more videoscomparing the us to Sweden or “peoples lives” in Sweden, please click the subscribe button.And lastly ifyou have any questions about healthcare in Sweden, or have any comments about it, leave them inthe comments section below. We read every single comment and try to respond to as numerous as possible.So how does this compare with the USA healthcare? Well healthcare in the united states is verycomplicated and it differs from state to state, but generally how it wreaks is boss sponsorhealth insurance means on behalf of their employees, and the employer frequently pays around8 5% with government employees paying the remaining 15% and it’s usually simply subtracted straight outof their paycheck.And insurance companies negotiate costs with medical providers likehospitals or clinics. So if you have a certain insurance and you go to this hospital it canbe more expensive because it’s out of network, if you go to this hospital it’s cheaper, and itdiffers by physician. So it’s extremely complicated in the cost very widely and i’ve actually had theexact same surgery in the united states and in Sweden so I can sort of vouch for both systems.So I have a punctured eardrum so I had to have corrective surgery on it in the united states, and it cost me about $1500 US dollars with my assurance. So my assurance paid for most ofit and then I get paid $ 1500 US dollars. Uh by the way that doctor screwed up thesurgery and actually built the problem worse. So I had to have another surgery whenI came to Sweden, and that surgery rate me $30 US dollars. And that was a full surgery whereI was put to sleep I had anesthetics. I was in the hospital for a full period .$ 30 dollars that’snothing. Yeah it’s good it was it was mind-blowing I was expecting to come sticker asset on my wayout when I had to pay, but it was like $ 30. That’s crazy but if it’s so cheap. It must beterrible quality right? That’s the dispute you sounds most common is that socialized medicine oruniversal health care or authority medicine is inferior to the American system, and while Iwill say that the united states does have the most innovative and best health care in the world, for example the the top three graded infirmaries in the world are in the united states, and 20 out ofthe top 100 hospices are in the united states, and you know the most powerful people in theworld, the global leaders, the heads of government, they travel to the united states to seekmedical care when something goes wrong. So the united states I would say the the bestmedical care in the world is in the united states for sure, they have the best specialist, the bestsurgeons, and so on I think is generally true. But then you think about how many that isaccessible too right, it’s only accessible to like the very powerful.Right that’s the thing, so we can compare the health of the Swedish population versus the health of the Americanpopulation by looking at plots from the OECD. So the OECD tracks data regarding 37 developedcountries that are considered high income and have a high human development index. So here’sa map establishing specific populations handled for a core set of health care services and what’s reallyquite shocking is that 8% percentage or about 27.5 million Americans, so almost about three times thepopulation of Sweden, don’t have healthcare. So I believe medical care or the lack of medicalcare is what is contributing to inequality in the united states. When people can’t affordhealth insurance and then when they do get sick and they’re hit with these debilitating, maiming, disastrous medical greenbacks. It sheds them into debt or you knowthrows their family into poverty. And I really truly think that’s what one of thereasons why you’re seeing a widening inequality wealth gap in the united states is because somepeople have health insurance and can afford to go to the doctor and others do not.So one lane tomeasure this is by looking at disastrous state spending and mostly what this measuresis the percent of households that had to make a healthcare payment that was consideredcatastrophic to their business well-being. And as you can see in the united states 7.4% ofhouseholds in the last year made a cataclysmic health care payment and that compares to Swedenwith exclusively 1.8% of households. And what I think is really jarring is that there is a big differencebetween the richest households and the poorest households so for example the united states if yougo to gofundme.com, one third of all the campaigns on there are for raising money for health relatedthings. Yeah it’s so sad like all the kids needing help and you know they’re not gonna survive ifthey don’t get this coin, and the mothers can’t pay for it. It’s so sad. Another sort of proxyto measure health between countries is looking at the life expectancy at birth and as you cansee here on this chart in the united states the life expectancy is around 78 years old, andin Sweden, which is above average, it’s 82 and a half years old.Like I said earlier a lot ofAmericans don’t actually inspect the dentist each year by looking at the chart you can see thatonly 41% of Americans had been to a dentist in 2014 and in Sweden it was 79%. Yeah itlooks like Sweden and the united states come pretty close on the number of adults that inhale ona daily basis, you can see that Sweden has about 10% and the united states is about 10.5%. So thisis the shared population of dependent drinkers and wow usa is crowd four behind Latvia, hungary andrussia.And Sweden is what is that like 10 th sit between slovak republic and lithuania. So asyou can see in many ways swedes are actually a lot healthier than Americans. In fact Sweden wasranked the sixth healthiest country in the world by bloomberg and the us was rankedall the way down in figure 34. That is I mean you think of the united states asbeing the richest country in the world, surely they have the best healthcare for most people? And it’s all the way down to number 34. But what about the wait times that is something you oftenhear when you talk about universal healthcare. Wait durations in countries with universal healthcarecan be much longer compared to those in the us. For example for that ear surgery I had here inSweden, I did wait I think it was like four to six months to get the surgery. Yeah whereas inthe us I could planned and have in a few weeks. And what I consider a great deal of beings don’t realizeis that you can buy private health insurance in Sweden.It exists and I think it’s likeone in ten or something. In Sweden one in ten people do not rely on Sweden’s universalhealth care but instead buy private health insurance. While the costs for private plansvary, one can expect to pay around 4000 kronor which is around $ 435 us dollars annually for oneperson on average. So what do you think about Swedish healthcare versus Americanhealthcare? It’s hard to say because if you live in the us and you make a lot ofmoney and you have a good health insurance, that will pay for everything chiefly, but publication the one major thing that i’m like afraid of moving to the us is, if we don’t have the besthealth insurance.And whereas in Sweden I is a well-known fact that I will always be protected. I know that ifone of us goes sick, we won’t be able to work, or we don’t need to sell a residence. Yeah I think younailed it on the president. I intend I concur I foresee for the broader population for the generalpublic the Swedish system is clearly much better. Whereas if you are you know fortunate enoughto have a high-paying job in the USA and have really good health insurance, then Iwould say that system is probably better, but again for the majority of members of the peoplefor the whole I meditate the Swedish system is fair and works.And like we said you can alwayspurchase private health insurance in Sweden if you don’t want the government health care. Yeah soI kind of wish more Americans would consider universal health care coverage. We’ll see if itever happens. It probably won’t probably won’t ..
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