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SiS - Sick in Sweden - An Immigrant Experience

A few years ago I read a short article in a local Stockholm, Sweden newspaper about how immigrant tax payers in Sweden must travel abroad to receive medical attention, using up their savings, and sometimes having to borrow the money to be able to do so.

I was puzzled by what I had read. If I were to trust the Swedish people, with whom I had mostly discussed such matters, I would expect the standard of medical care to be consistently excellent. According to the people interviewed for the article, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

Much like most people in Sweden who read such articles, I presumed the problem must be the immigrant's lack of familiarity as to how to access the plentiful services, what their alternatives are, and what various authorities one can turn to in the unlikely event that the system should fail them. After all, one is/ /free to choose one's own care provider. Furthermore, the Swedish care seekers have the two parallel systems of public and private caregivers to choose from, both padded with every safety net imaginable to make sure no one will ever fall and hurt themselves.

Well, I did. I fell and injured my neck not long after reading the article. Being an immigrant in need of medical care, much like the people interviewed, I figured I might as well take notes as I pass through the system. Am I ever glad I did!

What I found is scary beyond anything I could have imagined. The sorry fact is that as an immigrant in Sweden, one is left at the mercy of medical practitioners with questionable ethics, and whose engagement is limited to preventing the foreigners from accessing the system, leaving the sick and the injured with nowhere to turn to for help.

My Story is a human experience behind the article.

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