A Winnipeg editorialist takes a hit for praising the opening of the healthcare market in Stockholm, and Johan Hjertqvist responds to the critics.
Johan Hjertqvist
Competing Hospitals and Providers Work Miracles
To make hospitals depend more on the income they generate by attracting patients and performing treatments has a radical “psychological impact” on the organization – Sweden
Important step towards a European care market
EU citizens are now entitled to seek medical care anywhere within the EU and to have it paid for by their country of domicile.
The End of the Beginning
The End of the Beginning – a short international update on the Stockholm healthcare revolution – summarises the healthcare advances made in Stockholm during the 1990s, describing the reforming process and its good results, but also the new difficulties that have cropped up along the way.
Featured News
There’s Nothing Fair About Canadian Health Care
For the past 14 years, Vancouver surgeon Dr. Brian Day has led the charge for health-care reform, pushing for the right of patients to pay for private care if their health and well-being are threatened as a result of waiting in a stagnant and overburdened public...
Transformers: More than Meets the Eye
The path to net zero, based on the much disputed belief that carbon dioxide is a pollution, is more steep and impractical than most people realize. Replacing fossil fuels with clean electricity will require much more power generation and a greatly upgraded grid to...
Despite Elections: Health Reforms Continue
Sweden’s 2002 election result will slow, not stop or reverse trend to consumer-oriented healthcare reforms
The Health Care Revolution in Stockholm
The first English-language introduction to the Stockholm County Council’s full-scale experiment in systematic change.
User Fees For Health Care In Sweden
Before the Swedish health-care system was socialized in 1970, patients paid out-of-pocket for a fairly large proportion of services.
When The Employees Take Over…
This is a completely different working place today compared with seven years ago. Today we stand on our own.
Competition in Emergency Healthcare
The Stockholm metropolitan area has witnessed a rapid transition in the style and format of health care. The new, competition-based model of public healthcare is now about to hit the emergency room and operating theatre in that city.
The Internet Empowers Swedish Healthcare Consumers
In Stockholm healthcare consumers can go online to compare waiting lists and choose between private and public providers.
Swedish Healthcare in Transition
The day in October when I returned to Sweden, the Social Democrat government, with Green Party support, finally presented a bill intended to forbid the selling of emergency hospitals to profit-making companies.
Sweden’s Purchaser-Provider Split in Healthcare
For 500 years Sweden has been a uniform and centralized country. Today it is on the road to pluralism and stronger regional governments. Often the leader of new trends in Europe, Swedes are making it clear to their politicians that they want public policies which cater better to individual needs and preferences.