As a citizen of Sweden (please don’t confuse it with Switzerland) more than half my salary goes to taxes. The average person in this country pays 53% in taxes, most of it before they even get to touch their own money. If you happen to own a company you may pay up to 80% (!!!) of your income in taxes. Let me show you an example of how much goes to taxes on an average salary (Swedish money is called Kronor or kr. for short):

 

• The employer pays for you: 26.484 kr
• Employers Fee: 6.484 kr
• Your gross salary: 20.000 kr
• Municipal tax: 5.444 kr
• Work tax deduction: -883 kr
• On your salary specification: 15.439 kr
• Consumption tax (VAT): 3.026 kr
• Left for you: 12.413 kr
• Total ammount of taxes: 14.071 kr or 53%

Notice how they use the word “fee” to hide how much taxes you pay. Most swedes doesnt even know of the “Employers fee” because they never see it. This can be seen throughout the system if you bother to look. I have consciously left out other taxes such as penalty taxes for certain products that some guy above you decided is bad for you such as alcohol, tobacco, gasoline or labour (hiring a plumber to fix your toilet will cost you an arm and a leg due to all these taxes that both you and the plumber have to pay).

In spite of this enormous tax burden, if you visit a doctor or an emergency room you still have to pay 250 kr for every visit. 280 if you don’t have any cash on you and get the bill sent home afterwards.

So to sum it up: No it is by no means free. It is VERY expensive.

Myth 2: Scandinavian health care rocks!!!

The Truth: No it doesn’t in any way.

The government in Sweden has a history of cutting down on health care and making the health care left harder to use. Forty years ago a Swedish doctor treated 9 patients per day. Today he/she treats 4 at best. Add to that the fact that since then taxes have skyrocketed. Forty years ago our taxes were on the same level as the United States or lower. So as the price we pay go up, service goes down. You wait for treatment for hours, days, weeks, months and in some cases years.

A highly respected newspaper here one day reported of a man who had been suffering heart problems and waited in line for surgery. After “only” TWELVE YEARS he got a mail saying that he was now welcome to have the surgery. Of course he had already been to Thailand years before that otherwise he would have been dead.

So both the American private insurance system and the socialized insurance system sucks, what to do?

The solution can be spelled with one word: Freedom. Both of these systems are based on insurances. In the US its payed individually and in Sweden it is payed through taxes. That means that neither patient nor doctor cares what anything costs and it leads to the prices going up and freedom is lost because you are either a slave to a private insurance company or the state. To press prices down you need to get rid of the insurance system and when you need treatment go to the independent clinic with the best price and the highest service. Add to that the insurance bureaucracy goes back to hell where it belongs because it is no longer needed. That doctor will have the same price regardless of what condition you are in. You have this choice in America, in Sweden it is banned through law.

Does “Hillary care” still sound awesome?