Debate: Helldén's Proposal Belongs in the Trash

Daniel Helldén (Green Party) wants to see the nationalization of online healthcare. With such a proposal, you can say goodbye to your online doctor, writes the debater.

DEBATE. The Green Party proposes in Dagens Nyheter the nationalization of online healthcare to reduce what is called 'unnecessary visits.' Allowing the state's clumsy hands to steer the evolving online healthcare market would be a mistake, and the proposal points to a misunderstanding of primary care's role.

Approximately one in five Swedes uses a healthcare app annually for doctor visits. More than 60 percent of the population is positively inclined towards the digitalization of healthcare. How did we get here? It was the online healthcare companies—not the state or any individual region—that brought the rest of public healthcare into the present. It would be insane to dismantle this appreciated healthcare market, especially since patients prefer online doctors to avoid the rigid public healthcare system.

Innovation arises from the bottom and grows upwards. It was the online healthcare services that, in the latter half of the last decade, set the bar for the entire healthcare digitalization, and it was fortunate, as digital doctor contacts became absolutely necessary during the Covid pandemic. If the state takes over the online healthcare market, it will mean that innovation will come to a halt.

The Green Party talks about unnecessary visits, as if Daniel Helldén (Green Party) or any healthcare bureaucrat for that matter could pinpoint an exact definition of the term. Presumably, they envision a state-run online healthcare system that will filter patients more strictly through what is called triage. But as a Canadian experiment has shown, filtering results in poorer access for the most vulnerable in society.

Health Issues Ignored

Language barriers, cultural differences, and knowledge gaps among both healthcare providers and patients mean that real health issues are ignored. In Sweden, already a third feel that their health issues are not taken seriously. In other words, we should not make this problem worse than it already is.

Primary care—at least a well-functioning primary care—has the task of meeting patients with all their health issues, in all the different ways they seek help. Here, private online doctors play an important role: they create maximum accessibility because they have the incentive to help as many as possible. No one needs to wait too long just because they couldn't express their issues completely correctly.

It is, of course, easier to blame someone else than to review one's own regional Green Party policies.

And to the extent that online healthcare companies can be accused of being cost-driving, this is due to the regions' own ways of paying for healthcare. When digital healthcare really began to flourish, it was because Region Sörmland had no visit fees at all for their health centers. The cost development was thus a problem created by political decisions. It is, of course, easier to blame someone else than to review one's own regional Green Party policies.

If we want to further develop and not dismantle digital healthcare, the compensation systems for online doctors should absolutely be improved. It must also become easier to operate at the national level and across regional borders for the various companies.

In any case, the proposal for the nationalization of online healthcare fits in the spacious trash bin of hasty political statements launched just before Almedalen Week.

by Isac Riddarsparre

Resident doctor and collaborator at the think tank Synaps