[jhrozek]

Even worse: Unless you pay private insurance yourself, the quality of the free insurance (at your nearest vårdcentralen) is absolutely laughable.

My family of 4 pays about 1800 SEK/month for private insurance to actually have a chance to see a competent doctor.

[brtkdotse]

While I agree that vårdcentralen-level health care is hit or miss, the point is that _everyone_ has a basic level of health care and getting sick won’t bankrupt you.

This has the second-order effect that _I_ won’t have to worry about _someone dear to me_ will be personally bankrupted by a medical condition. It saves me having to decide whether or not I should indebt myself to pay for their treatment.

Not having to raise fundraisers for my family members cancer treatment is worth a whole lot of disposable income for me.

[qqqwerty]

In the US, we pay 5x-10x that amount for a crappy high deductible plan that has measurably worse outcomes than your free insurance.

It is hard to overstate how bad US healthcare is for the typical American. If you are wealthy, you have access to some of the best doctors in the world, but for the rest of us we are entirely dependent on our employer for access to reasonable health care.