Who's Afraid Of Social Democracy?

Sweden

Some trips are planned, others are accidental. For Labor Day, my choices were the Northwest U.S. or the Caribbean. I soon discarded the Caribbean – with the hurricane season, bad weather was a real threat. And traveling to the Northwest wasn’t cheap around the holiday. Then I started looking at European cities with direct flights from the U.S., more out of curiosity than anything else. I found one with airfares costing merely $70 above tickets for the Northwest – and that’s how I ended up in Stockholm, Sweden.

Sweden is slightly bigger than California, and its population of 9.2 million is about ¼ that of the Golden State. Many associate Sweden with Abba, Ikea, or Nobel Prizes, but having been there before, I always viewed the country as one of the most advanced societies on earth and its rankings confirm that - Sweden is first in the world in the latest Economist’s Democracy Index, third in Gender Equality and seventh in the UN’s Human Development Index. Not bad for a place filled with Barbarians some centuries ago.

Sweden is a social democracy, with many ideas borrowed from socialism (and I can hear some people gasping at the S-word). It has one of the world’s highest tax burdens with a tax-to-GDP ratio of 48% (the U.S. is ~28%), and taxes fund one of the most generous welfare systems in the world, with virtually free schools, child care, health care, pensions, and elder care. And as the debate about U.S. health care reform rages on, I couldn’t help but research how things work over there.

In Sweden, health care costs 9% of GDP (vs. 16% in the U.S.), funded mostly by taxes (70%), with only 3% coming from patient fees – patients pay only SEK 80 (~$11.50) per day for hospital stays, and no more than SEK 1,800 (~$260) in consultations and medications per 12-month period. The health care system is decentralized, with counties responsible for providing services – each county owns all emergency hospitals while about 25% of health centers are outsourced to privately run companies. Sweden ranks 10th in the world in life expectancy, and even though U.S. health care spending is almost double the percent of GDP than Sweden's, the U.S. ranks 50th, 7 spots behind Bosnia Herzegovina (don’t jeer, Brazilian friends, because Brazil ranks behind Gaza!)

Swedes are doing something right, but nothing is perfect: a major complaint is the long waiting time for non-emergency treatment. So the government came up with a rule to minimize that: if the waiting time exceeds three months, the patient is offered care in a county other than their own, with all costs paid for by their own county, including travel. The Swedish health system sounds so good that I wish I’d sprained an ankle just to experience first hand this “socialist” system…

Sweden has a long seafaring history, and perhaps this is more evident in the capital Stockholm, known as “Venice of the North” and spread over 14 islands connected by over 50 bridges. About 30% of the city area is made up of waterways, with another 30% covered by green spaces, making it one of the greenest cities in Europe. In fact, earlier this year, Stockholm won the first European Green Capital title awarded by the European Commission, and it aims to be “fossil fuel free” by 2050.

The heart of Stockholm is Gamla Stan (Old Town), the city’s oldest section founded in the 13th century. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, the area was a slum, but in the 1980s, people started to value the maze of cobbled streets lined with medieval buildings, and the island is now one of city’s main attractions. For the best of Gamla Stan, don’t just stick to Västerlånggatan, the very commercial main thoroughfare. Take any side street and roam aimlessly, not worrying about getting lost – Gamla Stan is so small that you’ll always end up by the water.

For boat fiends, two places are a must. One are the docks on the eastern side of the small island of Skeppsholmen, with still functioning old vessels, some built in the 19th century, some made entirely of oak. It looks more like an impromptu museum than a pier. The other is the Vasa Museum on the island of Djurgården. Vasa was a 64-gun warship, the first of its kind built in Sweden, designed to be the mightiest in the world at the time – measuring 230 ft (69 m) in length and 172 ft (52.5 m) in height, and decorated with numerous statues, Vasa was to be a symbol of Sweden’s wealth and power. The ship is majestic and I can only imagine the excitement surrounding its maiden voyage in 1628: hundreds at port watching Vasa set sail, proud as they could ever be of such an imposing vessel. After Vasa traveled about a nautical mile…it capsized and sank, and in this case, there wasn’t even an iceberg to blame. The ship slumbered in the bay for 333 years until it was finally recovered in 1961.

On the same island as Vasa is Skansen, the world’s first open-air museum with a collection of traditional Swedish houses and shops brought from different parts of the country. Staff in period costumes recreate life in centuries past and demonstrate weaving, glass-blowing, and blacksmithing among other crafts. Skansen is entertaining for both adults and children, and with 75 acres, you can easily spend a day there.

Sweden is a monarchy and you can actually visit sections of the palace where the royal family lives in Drottningholm (there is another palace in Gamla Stan, used only for state functions). On the day we went, there was an official reception but the palace remained open for visitation and around 3 pm, King, Queen and guests came outside for official photos, and I managed to take a few pictures. So from now on, every time I speak of this episode I’ll say that I’ve encountered Swedish royalty on palatial grounds and have had the pleasure of sharing the gardens with them.

If Stockholmers are any indication, Swedes are unassuming, extremely polite people with a very high level of education (everyone we met spoke English) and apparently healthy (about 85% of the population are non-smokers and less than 10% are obese). And for Americans fearing that the healthcare public option may lead to socialism, Sweden and other developed countries prove that market economies can provide quality universal healthcare for their citizens. It’s mainly a question of putting people before private profits.