9 ms·

Spanish flu helped create Sweden's modern welfare state

152 points by notlukesky 7y ago

plastic_teeth 7y ago
I hope covid-19 wakes up America the same way because it's time for a change
- stx 7y ago
  Sure but don't fall for the false promises socialism makes.
  - redis_mlc 7y ago
    > Sure but don't fall for the false promises socialism makes. What a pithy comment. I guess that ends the debate before it even starts. Except that every other Western nation has socialized medicine, and most of their citizens are happy with it. I hope your grocery cashier doesn't have corona virus this week, because they aren't checking into a US hospital. Don't fall for the false promises capitalism makes. We have tens of millions of Americans who can't afford the ambulance ride to the hospital, let alone the stay there for even one day. And we probably spend as much on administrative and billing overhead for health care as other countries spend on services. Think about that.
    - jokowueu 7y ago
      America's memory of the red scare will eventually disappear but it's gonna be a while.it will eventually catch on and become a more democratic socialist country
    - rapeisputinlies 7y ago
      Americans have no clue that their issue isn't socialized healthcare, it's fixing your corrupt insurances practices making doctors charge so much. Remove that, and the prices will come down and you'll have best of both worlds instead of this nonsense that Europe has the right idea. Try getting an actual doctors appointment in Sweden and then compare that to the bill you're actually have paid. Don't think it's free, and don't think you're being served what you actually paid for. Other countries do capitalism in healthcare without any of the American issues and it has always worked better than the dream Bernie is selling you and Europeans peddle. Obviously most people don't know better and alternatives, but Europeans get high and mighty out of their nonsense to rub it in Americans even though it's shit, or at least my experience of it. The only country with the right idea and doesn't actually suck in Europe is Switzerland. Germany, Scandinavian countries, the UK is all a joke in comparison.
  - thatguyagain 7y ago
    Can you explain to me as a Swede what false promise I am falling for?
    - christkv 7y ago
      That Sweden is a socialist country. Socialism is not the same as Social-Democratic which is what most countries in Europe are. Call it capitalism with a social security net.
    - blackrock 7y ago
      That in America, socialism only exists for the rich and wealthy. (Bailouts, tax breaks, trickle down economics). They get super rich in the good times, and then gets bailed out for their mistakes in the bad times. But for the rest of us, it’s the dog-eat-dog world of crony capitalism. Welcome to America! You’ll love it here. Btw, try not to get sick.
  - imafish 7y ago
    Care to elaborate? I live in a social democratic country and will gladly answer any uncertainties you might have. Edit: Not sure why I am being downvoted. I was genuinely curious.
  - bildung 7y ago
    If you look at the actual numbers, the northern European countries are actually better at implementing the promises of a democratic capitalist society: Higher median income, higher life expectancy, higher rankings in Happiness indices like the OECD Better Life Index, way higher voting turnout...
    - mseidl 7y ago
      Denmark has the best income mobility and also the lowest income inequality. I you want the American dream, move to Denmark.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  If there will be much of America remaining. Over 600k unemployment claims and an infection graph that looks way scarier than Italy where the situation is disastrous, combined with a lack of tests and many people still going to work...
- rurban 7y ago
  There was a short 2 weeks opportunity window for that to happen, but it didn't happen. The ruling class made sure there will be no disruption in their (healthcare) system.
Yetanfou 7y ago
> The 1918 pandemic ravaged the remote city of Östersund. But its legacy is a city – and country – well-equipped to deal with 21st century challenges Had they written this 30 years ago this would certainly have been true, Sweden as a nation had heeded Baden Powell's motto "Be Prepared". A large part of this preparation was realised through the unusual but effective way the country had organised its defence which was integrated into most parts of society. The system was called 'Totalförsvaret' (literally 'the total defence') and integrated armed forces, civilian institutions and parts of industry into an organisational structure which was designed to be resistant against the loss of one or more of its arms. There were large stockpiles of material and supplies scattered around the country, these included amongst other 50 mobile field hospitals with 2100 respirators, fully equipped operating theatres, etc. The country had stockpiled food supplies which could last for a maximum of 2 years. But... nearly all of this was disbanded, given away, thrown away, sold off or demolished in the years after the demise of the Soviet Union. The field hospitals went to the Baltic states, the respirators (new, unused) were given away or thrashed. The food supplies are gone, Sweden has gone from 2 years of supplies to about 16 days, i.e. whatever is in the distributor's warehouses and on the road at the moment. Before the 90's Sweden had access to about 3600 respirators, now the number seems to be around 520 - seems to be because the "government" has decided this number is critical to the nation's security and as such is not published. The country has the lowest number of hospital beds per capita in the OECD after Portugal. Maybe SARS2 will help to rebuild this part of the Swedish state? Time will tell.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Maybe 25 years even. (After that, it went downhill fast.) The defense was truly remarkably in depth and at all levels prepared to continue operations without a remaining chain of command. A Soviet invading force would have of course "won" within weeks, but not before suffering huge losses thanks to always-at-the-ready 200 state of the art fighter bombers using highways all over the country for runways, with a ground crew of only 5 per plane, and a handful of the worlds best (for littoral waters) submarines. When the coastal artillery would be neutralized, presumably with nukes or speznas, the mobile artillery would retreat inland. The cities were assumed to be nuked, but a large fraction of the city population had underground shelter. Even with Air and Naval forces depleted, the real struggle for a would be invader would only begin. There were weapons and food stored all over the countryside, and the communicated doctrine was "if you hear about a surrender from anyone, even the prime minister, it's false news. Keep fighting until the country is liberated." It would have been like Afghanistan, except the insurgents would have had access to better weapons. All of this had the purpose of deterring the Soviet command from full on ground invasion. Perhaps only nuke the larger cities, destroy some strategic assets and kill the government. In a WW3 scenario, that would have been a win for Sweden.
roenxi 7y ago
The title is basically clickbait; there is no link mentioned between the Spanish Flu and Sweden's welfare state except both happened in Sweden in the last ~100 years. I suspect they aren't linked. Societies have generally changed a lot in the past 100 years. Pre- and Post- WWI Europe are different beasts.
- zurn 7y ago
  The relevant parts: "As the epidemic raged in late August, when around 20 people were dying daily, the city’s bank director Carl Lignell withdrew funds from Stockholm without authorisation and requisitioned a school for use as a hospital (the city didn’t have one). " .. "“What is interesting is that, after the epidemic, the state dropped investigations against Lignell and made tentative steps towards a cooperative approach to social reform. Issues such as poor nutrition and housing were on the political agenda,” says Hedlund. Anyone trying to date the inception of Sweden’s welfare state cannot overlook the events of autumn 1918." You can argue about the causality but it's not clickbait in the sense that it interviews a local expert who is making a case that it was a significant factor.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    There is a short but rather tumultuous time between 1918 and 2020 where a few minor things happened like the rise of communism, the widespread use of oil and the EU. The article establishes that people cared about poor people in 1918 and in 2020. The article is evidence, theory and anecdote lite about the links. The October Revolution was in 1917. I bet that was more influential than the Spanish Flu. Communism was fresh, young and not been discredited and exposed as an ideology of bloodthirsty monsters. I'd pick that as a genesis point.
    - nkozyra 7y ago
      > ideology of bloodthirsty monsters I'm not sure this is a fair reading of history.
      - 7y ago
fsiefken 7y ago
If so, you would think their government would have asked the population physical distancing already and work from home where one can. https://www.government.se/articles/2020/03/s-work-in-the-areas-of-public-health-medical-care-social-care-and-social-insurance-with-regard-to-the-covid-19-virus/ https://www.government.se/articles/2020/03/s-work-in-the-are...
- samvher 7y ago
  I'm living in Sweden at the moment (am Dutch myself) and am quite disappointed with the response to the crisis. I live in a shared house (12 people) and many are still going to work as normal. One works in social services and sees dozens of asylum seekers every day, she has gotten very little guidance and there has been very little action in terms of prevention even though they have had people getting sick with COVID-19 already. Others are on paid leave now but it doesn't seem consistent across the board. The speech of the prime minister yesterday was very mild, basically just counting on citizens' personal responsibility. Not that I think the Netherlands is doing much better though. Overall I think it's very frustrating to see the extremely slow response in both Europe and the US after seeing multiple countries deal with the pandemic more or less successfully.
  - Lewton 7y ago
    It's really depressing looking at how Sweden is handling it when sitting in Denmark. The contrast is pretty extreme Sweden seem to be prioritizing the economy heavily. Comparing the two responses is going to be interesting once this all blows over
    - marvin 7y ago
      Ditto in Norway. I'm shaking my head. Hope you guys over there will get through this okay.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    What do you think of the Belgian situation (closed borders, quarantine and generalized confinement) ? We are closing our borders and heavy fines are thrown around (4000€ for crossing the border) but it seems the Netherlands aren't going hard enough for the moment.
piokoch 7y ago
Strange, I always thought that welfare state enabler were natural resources (like iron ore), the fact they had made through the II World War untouched and hard work of the post-war generation. The association between the flu and that what happened 30-40 years later sounds a little bit like a click bait.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Ephem 7y ago
This is an article about the city of Östersund written in 2018, the few links between the Spanish flu and any reform are tenuous at best. Having said that, I grew up in Östersund and found the article fascinating and a good read. One interesting thing is that now, a 100 years later, the tourism of the region once again brings a pandemic. Swedens largest ski resort Åre, an hour west of Östersund, has a bunch of Covid-19 cases that has spread through after ski parties (which has since stopped). Some context to the article not relating to Covid-19: Jämtland, the region where Östersund is located, is located in the geographic middle of Sweden, but is considered to be in the northern parts because the demographic of the country is heavily skewed south. In the west it borders Norway and in 1563–1677 it switched between being part of Denmark/Norway and Sweden 13(!) times. Perhaps as a result of this there is still a strong sense of regional identity. Among other things Jämtland is a "fake republic" with a "fake president" which gives a speech during the music festival once a year. This is just in good fun and the speech is mostly about peace, love and understanding, but hearing 15k people singing the regional anthem "Jämtlandssången" after the speech always gives me goosebumps. Östersund has always been strategically important militarily, in semi-recent times because the Soviet Union would have to pass it to take Trondheim in Norway and the harbor there. The article mentions the airbase closing down, but there were other military units that were disbanded as well. The article touches on this mentioning the university, but another reason the town is still successful today is that it also supported newly unemployed military personel in starting companies. Since one of the units that were disbanded(/moved?) was the military technical school, the city managed to keep a bunch of people with higher education which might otherwise have relocated and now has a few tech-companies and a somewhat entrepreneurial spirit. This is just some stream of consciousness stuff, while I live in Stockholm now I got excited "my city" was featured on HN. :) It is a beautiful city and region with fantastic nature and a very long and fascinating history, definitely visit it if you have the opportunity!
mscasts 7y ago
Swede here. Our government was extremely slow to act and didn't shut down anything which let the COVID-19 virus spread rapidly in Sweden and now we have an uncontrolled spread with no testing except for the groups at risk. The article is basically clickbait, Sweden has one of the lowest amounts of hospital beds and respirators per capita in EU. We have much fewer ICU-spots than Italy, lower hospital beds etc so we will certainly have a worse time than Italy if we cannot contain the spread somewhat. The government still hasn't imposed a lot of restrictions compared to other countries. If this is good or bad, will be determined in the future.
- azepoi 7y ago
  I think that Sweden is regarded as a country with good healthcare quality. The problem here is that western governments thought misleadingly that they were safe because their healthcare systems ranked high in a number of rankings. But here we face what really is a quantitative problem, not a qualitative problem. We can provide good care at an individual level, and the virus is often benign at the individual level. It really becomes a quantitative problem and we are on the exponential phase of the epidemic.
  - rurban 7y ago
    No, Sweden was considered a country with a good healthcare system under the former socialist governments. But now that the capitalists are ruling Sweden and Denmark, the ship turned towards the US and UK systems. With its known problems. Their healthcare system is now the 2nd worst in the EU. Social problems are rising right and left.
    - capableweb 7y ago
      > Their healthcare system is now the 2nd worst in the EU WHAT? Now I haven't been to every European country, probably around 30% of them, would be my guess. But literally the country with the best healthcare system of them all, that I've visited a hospital in, have been Sweden. You got any numbers to backup this claim? Spain, Italy and Greece clearly have a worse healthcare system, and those are just three examples I can think of quickly. Surely lots of countries in eastern europe has it worse than Sweden. One source showing the opposite of what you're saying: > Sweden is ranked third by the Commonwealth Fund, with a high proportion of doctors, above-average healthcare spending, and relatively low prescriptions of drugs. From https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/09/which-country-has-worlds-best-healthcare-system-this-is-the-nhs https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/09/which-countr... which is using Commonwealth Fund as it's source.
AllasAskBar 7y ago
Ah, once sweden was a good country. We wanted to be the best at everything, calculation, sports, creativity, you name it! Then we got it into our head that we wanted to be the best at being worst, so here we are, rape capital, injustice capital. Naive, virtue signaling, pretentious assholes. Still some of the old guard though. Not all out of the game yet as you can see of how much tech we still produce.

152 points by notlukesky 7y ago

plastic_teeth 7y ago

I hope covid-19 wakes up America the same way because it's time for a change

stx 7y ago
Sure but don't fall for the false promises socialism makes.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  > Sure but don't fall for the false promises socialism makes. What a pithy comment. I guess that ends the debate before it even starts. Except that every other Western nation has socialized medicine, and most of their citizens are happy with it. I hope your grocery cashier doesn't have corona virus this week, because they aren't checking into a US hospital. Don't fall for the false promises capitalism makes. We have tens of millions of Americans who can't afford the ambulance ride to the hospital, let alone the stay there for even one day. And we probably spend as much on administrative and billing overhead for health care as other countries spend on services. Think about that.
  - jokowueu 7y ago
    America's memory of the red scare will eventually disappear but it's gonna be a while.it will eventually catch on and become a more democratic socialist country
  - rapeisputinlies 7y ago
    Americans have no clue that their issue isn't socialized healthcare, it's fixing your corrupt insurances practices making doctors charge so much. Remove that, and the prices will come down and you'll have best of both worlds instead of this nonsense that Europe has the right idea. Try getting an actual doctors appointment in Sweden and then compare that to the bill you're actually have paid. Don't think it's free, and don't think you're being served what you actually paid for. Other countries do capitalism in healthcare without any of the American issues and it has always worked better than the dream Bernie is selling you and Europeans peddle. Obviously most people don't know better and alternatives, but Europeans get high and mighty out of their nonsense to rub it in Americans even though it's shit, or at least my experience of it. The only country with the right idea and doesn't actually suck in Europe is Switzerland. Germany, Scandinavian countries, the UK is all a joke in comparison.
- thatguyagain 7y ago
  Can you explain to me as a Swede what false promise I am falling for?
  - christkv 7y ago
    That Sweden is a socialist country. Socialism is not the same as Social-Democratic which is what most countries in Europe are. Call it capitalism with a social security net.
  - blackrock 7y ago
    That in America, socialism only exists for the rich and wealthy. (Bailouts, tax breaks, trickle down economics). They get super rich in the good times, and then gets bailed out for their mistakes in the bad times. But for the rest of us, it’s the dog-eat-dog world of crony capitalism. Welcome to America! You’ll love it here. Btw, try not to get sick.
- imafish 7y ago
  Care to elaborate? I live in a social democratic country and will gladly answer any uncertainties you might have. Edit: Not sure why I am being downvoted. I was genuinely curious.
- bildung 7y ago
  If you look at the actual numbers, the northern European countries are actually better at implementing the promises of a democratic capitalist society: Higher median income, higher life expectancy, higher rankings in Happiness indices like the OECD Better Life Index, way higher voting turnout...
  - mseidl 7y ago
    Denmark has the best income mobility and also the lowest income inequality. I you want the American dream, move to Denmark.
mschuster91 7y ago
If there will be much of America remaining. Over 600k unemployment claims and an infection graph that looks way scarier than Italy where the situation is disastrous, combined with a lack of tests and many people still going to work...
rurban 7y ago
There was a short 2 weeks opportunity window for that to happen, but it didn't happen. The ruling class made sure there will be no disruption in their (healthcare) system.

Yetanfou 7y ago

> The 1918 pandemic ravaged the remote city of Östersund. But its legacy is a city – and country – well-equipped to deal with 21st century challenges Had they written this 30 years ago this would certainly have been true, Sweden as a nation had heeded Baden Powell's motto "Be Prepared". A large part of this preparation was realised through the unusual but effective way the country had organised its defence which was integrated into most parts of society. The system was called 'Totalförsvaret' (literally 'the total defence') and integrated armed forces, civilian institutions and parts of industry into an organisational structure which was designed to be resistant against the loss of one or more of its arms. There were large stockpiles of material and supplies scattered around the country, these included amongst other 50 mobile field hospitals with 2100 respirators, fully equipped operating theatres, etc. The country had stockpiled food supplies which could last for a maximum of 2 years. But... nearly all of this was disbanded, given away, thrown away, sold off or demolished in the years after the demise of the Soviet Union. The field hospitals went to the Baltic states, the respirators (new, unused) were given away or thrashed. The food supplies are gone, Sweden has gone from 2 years of supplies to about 16 days, i.e. whatever is in the distributor's warehouses and on the road at the moment. Before the 90's Sweden had access to about 3600 respirators, now the number seems to be around 520 - seems to be because the "government" has decided this number is critical to the nation's security and as such is not published. The country has the lowest number of hospital beds per capita in the OECD after Portugal. Maybe SARS2 will help to rebuild this part of the Swedish state? Time will tell.

jacobush 7y ago
Maybe 25 years even. (After that, it went downhill fast.) The defense was truly remarkably in depth and at all levels prepared to continue operations without a remaining chain of command. A Soviet invading force would have of course "won" within weeks, but not before suffering huge losses thanks to always-at-the-ready 200 state of the art fighter bombers using highways all over the country for runways, with a ground crew of only 5 per plane, and a handful of the worlds best (for littoral waters) submarines. When the coastal artillery would be neutralized, presumably with nukes or speznas, the mobile artillery would retreat inland. The cities were assumed to be nuked, but a large fraction of the city population had underground shelter. Even with Air and Naval forces depleted, the real struggle for a would be invader would only begin. There were weapons and food stored all over the countryside, and the communicated doctrine was "if you hear about a surrender from anyone, even the prime minister, it's false news. Keep fighting until the country is liberated." It would have been like Afghanistan, except the insurgents would have had access to better weapons. All of this had the purpose of deterring the Soviet command from full on ground invasion. Perhaps only nuke the larger cities, destroy some strategic assets and kill the government. In a WW3 scenario, that would have been a win for Sweden.

roenxi 7y ago

The title is basically clickbait; there is no link mentioned between the Spanish Flu and Sweden's welfare state except both happened in Sweden in the last ~100 years. I suspect they aren't linked. Societies have generally changed a lot in the past 100 years. Pre- and Post- WWI Europe are different beasts.

zurn 7y ago
The relevant parts: "As the epidemic raged in late August, when around 20 people were dying daily, the city’s bank director Carl Lignell withdrew funds from Stockholm without authorisation and requisitioned a school for use as a hospital (the city didn’t have one). " .. "“What is interesting is that, after the epidemic, the state dropped investigations against Lignell and made tentative steps towards a cooperative approach to social reform. Issues such as poor nutrition and housing were on the political agenda,” says Hedlund. Anyone trying to date the inception of Sweden’s welfare state cannot overlook the events of autumn 1918." You can argue about the causality but it's not clickbait in the sense that it interviews a local expert who is making a case that it was a significant factor.
- roenxi 7y ago
  There is a short but rather tumultuous time between 1918 and 2020 where a few minor things happened like the rise of communism, the widespread use of oil and the EU. The article establishes that people cared about poor people in 1918 and in 2020. The article is evidence, theory and anecdote lite about the links. The October Revolution was in 1917. I bet that was more influential than the Spanish Flu. Communism was fresh, young and not been discredited and exposed as an ideology of bloodthirsty monsters. I'd pick that as a genesis point.
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    > ideology of bloodthirsty monsters I'm not sure this is a fair reading of history.
    - 7y ago

fsiefken 7y ago

If so, you would think their government would have asked the population physical distancing already and work from home where one can. https://www.government.se/articles/2020/03/s-work-in-the-areas-of-public-health-medical-care-social-care-and-social-insurance-with-regard-to-the-covid-19-virus/ https://www.government.se/articles/2020/03/s-work-in-the-are...

samvher 7y ago
I'm living in Sweden at the moment (am Dutch myself) and am quite disappointed with the response to the crisis. I live in a shared house (12 people) and many are still going to work as normal. One works in social services and sees dozens of asylum seekers every day, she has gotten very little guidance and there has been very little action in terms of prevention even though they have had people getting sick with COVID-19 already. Others are on paid leave now but it doesn't seem consistent across the board. The speech of the prime minister yesterday was very mild, basically just counting on citizens' personal responsibility. Not that I think the Netherlands is doing much better though. Overall I think it's very frustrating to see the extremely slow response in both Europe and the US after seeing multiple countries deal with the pandemic more or less successfully.
- Lewton 7y ago
  It's really depressing looking at how Sweden is handling it when sitting in Denmark. The contrast is pretty extreme Sweden seem to be prioritizing the economy heavily. Comparing the two responses is going to be interesting once this all blows over
  - marvin 7y ago
    Ditto in Norway. I'm shaking my head. Hope you guys over there will get through this okay.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  What do you think of the Belgian situation (closed borders, quarantine and generalized confinement) ? We are closing our borders and heavy fines are thrown around (4000€ for crossing the border) but it seems the Netherlands aren't going hard enough for the moment.

piokoch 7y ago

Strange, I always thought that welfare state enabler were natural resources (like iron ore), the fact they had made through the II World War untouched and hard work of the post-war generation. The association between the flu and that what happened 30-40 years later sounds a little bit like a click bait.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Ephem 7y ago

This is an article about the city of Östersund written in 2018, the few links between the Spanish flu and any reform are tenuous at best. Having said that, I grew up in Östersund and found the article fascinating and a good read. One interesting thing is that now, a 100 years later, the tourism of the region once again brings a pandemic. Swedens largest ski resort Åre, an hour west of Östersund, has a bunch of Covid-19 cases that has spread through after ski parties (which has since stopped). Some context to the article not relating to Covid-19: Jämtland, the region where Östersund is located, is located in the geographic middle of Sweden, but is considered to be in the northern parts because the demographic of the country is heavily skewed south. In the west it borders Norway and in 1563–1677 it switched between being part of Denmark/Norway and Sweden 13(!) times. Perhaps as a result of this there is still a strong sense of regional identity. Among other things Jämtland is a "fake republic" with a "fake president" which gives a speech during the music festival once a year. This is just in good fun and the speech is mostly about peace, love and understanding, but hearing 15k people singing the regional anthem "Jämtlandssången" after the speech always gives me goosebumps. Östersund has always been strategically important militarily, in semi-recent times because the Soviet Union would have to pass it to take Trondheim in Norway and the harbor there. The article mentions the airbase closing down, but there were other military units that were disbanded as well. The article touches on this mentioning the university, but another reason the town is still successful today is that it also supported newly unemployed military personel in starting companies. Since one of the units that were disbanded(/moved?) was the military technical school, the city managed to keep a bunch of people with higher education which might otherwise have relocated and now has a few tech-companies and a somewhat entrepreneurial spirit. This is just some stream of consciousness stuff, while I live in Stockholm now I got excited "my city" was featured on HN. :) It is a beautiful city and region with fantastic nature and a very long and fascinating history, definitely visit it if you have the opportunity!

mscasts 7y ago

Swede here. Our government was extremely slow to act and didn't shut down anything which let the COVID-19 virus spread rapidly in Sweden and now we have an uncontrolled spread with no testing except for the groups at risk. The article is basically clickbait, Sweden has one of the lowest amounts of hospital beds and respirators per capita in EU. We have much fewer ICU-spots than Italy, lower hospital beds etc so we will certainly have a worse time than Italy if we cannot contain the spread somewhat. The government still hasn't imposed a lot of restrictions compared to other countries. If this is good or bad, will be determined in the future.

azepoi 7y ago
I think that Sweden is regarded as a country with good healthcare quality. The problem here is that western governments thought misleadingly that they were safe because their healthcare systems ranked high in a number of rankings. But here we face what really is a quantitative problem, not a qualitative problem. We can provide good care at an individual level, and the virus is often benign at the individual level. It really becomes a quantitative problem and we are on the exponential phase of the epidemic.
- rurban 7y ago
  No, Sweden was considered a country with a good healthcare system under the former socialist governments. But now that the capitalists are ruling Sweden and Denmark, the ship turned towards the US and UK systems. With its known problems. Their healthcare system is now the 2nd worst in the EU. Social problems are rising right and left.
  - capableweb 7y ago
    > Their healthcare system is now the 2nd worst in the EU WHAT? Now I haven't been to every European country, probably around 30% of them, would be my guess. But literally the country with the best healthcare system of them all, that I've visited a hospital in, have been Sweden. You got any numbers to backup this claim? Spain, Italy and Greece clearly have a worse healthcare system, and those are just three examples I can think of quickly. Surely lots of countries in eastern europe has it worse than Sweden. One source showing the opposite of what you're saying: > Sweden is ranked third by the Commonwealth Fund, with a high proportion of doctors, above-average healthcare spending, and relatively low prescriptions of drugs. From https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/09/which-country-has-worlds-best-healthcare-system-this-is-the-nhs https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/09/which-countr... which is using Commonwealth Fund as it's source.

AllasAskBar 7y ago

Ah, once sweden was a good country. We wanted to be the best at everything, calculation, sports, creativity, you name it! Then we got it into our head that we wanted to be the best at being worst, so here we are, rape capital, injustice capital. Naive, virtue signaling, pretentious assholes. Still some of the old guard though. Not all out of the game yet as you can see of how much tech we still produce.