James

Across Sweden, private operators are constantly scrutinized, and there is a perennial debate as to whether their profits should be reinvested back into the system. Yet the core model has endured over three decades, and it has outlasted liberal and conservative governments. Roughly 30 per cent of the country’s high-school students now go to a privately run school, and in Stockholm, one of the city’s largest hospitals, Saint Goran, has been privately run since 1999. It is all very relevant for Canada. Persistent provincial deficits have starved many public schools of resources, particularly when it comes to special education. The country’s health care system, meanwhile, seems close to breaking and it’ll likely only get worse. Baby boomers are aging, which means health care costs will soar. They’ve already jumped to around 12 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product, up from 6.5 per cent in 1975, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Yet whenever private models are mentioned in Canada, the backlash is swift. This is the country of Tommy Douglas, a land where health is a human right. Canadians also love to point at the United States and say no one in their right mind would want what they’ve got. The U.S. vastly outspends the OECD average on health care per person, but has one of the lowest life expectancies. Jens Eriksson, the head of the private health care network, sounds quite Canadian himself. “We don’t want the entire system to be private,” he says during a chat in Stockholm. “We want the foundation to be publicly run and publicly owned and publicly governed.” If Sweden, a socialist cousin, can have that, why can’t Canada? theglobeandmail.com/business…