Coming to Terms with “Free”

It’s another socialized medicine succcess!

In a country already plagued by skyrocketing sick leave costs, a new survey found that 40 percent of the population thinks it’s acceptable to skip work because they feel tired or have trouble getting along with their colleagues.

The survey, presented Friday by the National Social Insurance Board, showed that Swedes manifestly take advantage of the country’s liberal sick leave system, officials said.

Sixty-five percent of the 1,002 people interviewed also said that a stressful work situation is also a valid reason for calling in sick.

The survey shows “a deep lack of knowledge about what the health insurance is meant to cover,” board director Anna Hedborg said of Sweden’s 9 million residents.

What?  Give people something for free and they don’t appreciate it, and start treating it as an entitlement?  Perish the thought.

Sweden’s extensive cradle-to-grave welfare system includes generous social insurance programs covering sick leave, parental leave and unemployment benefits.

But paying for workers on long-term sick leave and disability has become one of the government’s biggest expenditures.

Sick leave compensation tripled from 15 billion kronor ($2 billion) in 1997 to 45 billion kronor ($6 billion) in 2002.

What?  Free health care is abused and costs an arm and a leg?  I’m shocked, I tell you… shocked!!!

People who call in sick do not receive any compensation for the first day they are absent.

But Eckerhall said many are abusing the current system by leaving work and calling in sick shortly before their work day is over. That then counts as one sick day, which lets them start receiving sick pay the next day.

“That means your day without compensation was 15 minutes long,” Eckerhall said. “Medically speaking, that sounds pretty odd.”

Yes, but in Sweden free health care is a “right,” and thus these people are fully within their “rights” to take advantage of the system in this manner.

“To many, this message may seem hard and even insensitive,” she wrote. “The truth is that if we don’t defend our common insurance today, we won’t be able to afford keeping it.”

What?  The Swedes, the very model for socialist compassion held up by Michael Moore and his cronies in the American left, have realized that they can’t afford to pay for free unlimited health benefits?  I’m simply aghast at the shock of it all.