Total Health Spending, USD PPP Per Capita (2019): $5,782

(Note: “Health spending measures the final consumption of health care goods and services (i.e. current health expenditure) including personal health care (curative care, rehabilitative care, long-term care, ancillary services and medical goods) and collective services (prevention and public health services as well as health administration), but excluding spending on investments. Health care is financed through a mix of financing arrangements including government spending and compulsory health insurance (“Government/compulsory”) as well as voluntary health insurance and private funds such as households’ out-of-pocket payments, NGOs and private corporations (“Voluntary”). This indicator is presented as a total and by type of financing (“Government/compulsory”, “Voluntary”, “Out-of-pocket”) and is measured as a share of GDP, as a share of total health spending and in USD per capita (using economy-wide PPPs).”

Source: OECD (2021), Health spending (indicator). doi: 10.1787/8643de7e-en (Accessed on 20 January 2021).

Current Health Expenditure Per Capita (USD) (2016): $5,711
Current Health Expenditure as Percentage of Gross Domestic Product (%) (2016): 10.9%
Domestic General Government Health Expenditure as Percentage of General Government Expenditure (%) (2016): 18.5%
Population with household expenditures on health greater than 10% of total household expenditure or income (2009-2015) (%): NA
Population with household expenditures on health greater than 25% of total household expenditure or income (2009-2015) (%): NA

Source: World health statistics 2019: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

Annual household out-of-pocket payment, constant (2016) PPP, per capita (USD) (2016): $821

Source: Global Health Expenditure Database. Health expenditure series. Geneva: World Health Organization. Last accessed Nov. 15, 2019.

Out-of-Pocket Spending as Share of Final Household Consumption (%) (2017): 3.8%

Source: OECD (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.

“Sweden has the third highest spending on health as a share of GDP in the EU, 11.0% compared to 9.9% in the EU in 2015. In terms of spending per capita, Sweden spent EUR 3 932 per capita on health in 2015 (adjusted for differences in purchasing power), which is the fifth highest in the EU (Figure 6).

“Public expenditure accounts for 84% of the total, a share which has been fairly stable over the past decade and is above the EU average (79%). Most private expenditure (93%) is paid out-of-pocket directly by households and voluntary health insurance still only plays a minor (but growing) role (see Section 5.2). The 290 municipalities fund elderly care, home care and social care, while the regions are responsible for primary, psychiatric and specialist health care. Local and regional taxes are supplemented by the central government and by user charges. Subsidies for prescription drugs are paid for through designated state grants to the regions.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2017), Sweden: Country Health Profile 2017, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels. dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264283572-en.

“Sweden’s health system provides universal population coverage for a broad basket of services. The majority of OOP is thus attributable to cost sharing requirements. These include co-payments for most health services adults use in Sweden, including hospitalization. Co-payments for health care visits and hospitalization vary across the 21 counties although policies have converged over time. Co-payments are differentiated to steer patients towards use of primary care during office hours. Co-payments for visits to specialist doctors without a referral are about twice as much as for a regular visit to a primary care doctor. In most counties children below age 20 are exempt from co-payments. There is a combined cap for each 12 month period determined at the national level, maximizing total co-payments for outpatient care. Deductibles, co-payments and caps for prescription drugs and dental care are determined fully at the national level. Dental care for individuals under age 22 is free. For adults, there is a deductible of SEK 1000 (€103) for prescription drugs followed by a stepwise increase in subsidies ending in a 12 months cap of SEK 2200 (€226). For dental care to adults, the deductible is SEK 3000 (€308), followed by increase in co-insurance to 85% above SEK 15,000 but without an overall cap. Additional minor changes in terms of additional subsidies for dental care to elderly were introduced in 2013. In 2009, prescription cost-sharing policy was changed such that patients now usually pay the full price for generic alternatives that are not the lowest cost generic. In 2012 cost-sharing limits on prescriptions as well as for outpatient services were increased (from SEK 1800 to SEK 2200 (€ 185–226) and SEK 900 to SEK 1100 (€ 92–113) respectively). These increased cost sharing requirements seem not to have had great impact on the average growth rate in 2004–2014, which was lower than in the previous period. This can perhaps be explained by the fact that the requirements were relatively minor and partially offset by better dental benefits.”

Rice, Thomas et al. “Revisiting out-of-pocket requirements: trends in spending, financial access barriers, and policy in ten high-income countries.” BMC health services research vol. 18,1 371. 18 May. 2018, doi:10.1186/s12913-018-3185-8.

Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems in the US and several other nations.

Page last updated Oct. 16, 2020 by Doug McVay, Editor.