According to
this Wikipedia entry, the United states is the only industrialized nation that does not provide universal health care to its citizens.
I must protest against what Roger said that Swedes pay two thirds of their income in tax. That is simply not true of the average citizen at all. It
is true, nevertheless, that the taxes we pay are defintely among the highest in the world.
Our taxes go to paying for free health care, free schooling (including free college tuition), infrastructure maintenance and various forms of welfare and contributions to people who are in need of assistance. Also, accepting rather huge numbers of refugees also costs a bit of money. Since 2003, Sweden has accepted at least 100,000 refugees from Iraq and granted most of them citizenship. I think the United States may have accepted about a thousand Iraqi refugees during the same time.
My best friend's sister met and married an American in the late 1970s, and she has been living in the United States ever since. When I compare what I think I can see of the two sisters' economic status, I can't see much of a difference. Both sisters regularly travel across the Atlantic to visit one another. However, it seems to me that the sister who lives in Sweden (and who is divorced, by the way) travels abroad more. Apart from regularly going to America to visit her sister, she usually travels abroad at least a couple of times each year. Mostly she visits countries in Europe, like Germany, Holland, Croatia, France and the Czech Republic. Two years ago she took both of her children to Ecuador for a month. She pays for all of this with the money she earns from working as a teacher. She lives in her own house, which she bought when she divorced her husband. She doesn't have to worry about her children's college tuition, because, as I said, that is free here.
Ann
