Lizard_King wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Lack of ultra-specialized care is a problem largely due to technology gap with the United States - here and nowhere else amongst the critical factors the United States healthcare system ranks extremely high along with Japan (parallel: lack of accumulation of wealth) although it's more a side-effect of GDP than anything.

Therein lies the crux of my problem with your line of reasoning, leaving aside the instinctive revulsion that Descartes' oversimplifications cause me. It is the bigger question of what Sweden might have been that troubles me when people point to the success of its health care system; I wonder (since all economic distribution requires that for one investment to be made another necessarily neglected) what Sweden would be like had they not decided to sacrifice all other fields of growth for health care. Also, it is open to debate whether the Swedish model can work indefinitely, ie how long it could work in a country without irreparably harming the massive capitalist infrastructure that it currently plunders to sustain its health care.