Government authorities in two Gothenburg districts say that a range of facilities must be shut in order to meet their target of cutting 80 million kroner, or US$10.5 million, from health expenditure. Meanwhile, all over Sweden local governments are slashing funding for social programs, citing a 2000 national law that outlaws deficits in their budgets. Even where they do not claim a budget shortfall, city officials argue that the closures are necessary to allow for a margin of operation.

The local radio and newspapers in Gothenburg are covering this so-called health-care crisis almost daily, along with the protests the cutbacks have sparked.  
 
Protests in Gothenburg
On February 28 some 2,000 people marched in Uddevalla, a city near here whose hospital is threatened with closure or drastic budget cuts. Hundreds have also marched in the Gothenburg suburbs of Hammarkullen and Tynnered. Two hundred mostly elderly people attended a March 19 protest meeting in Kortedala, a third suburb of Gothenburg where one of the threatened health clinics is located. Many participants took leaflets and posters to build a planned city-wide march in the center of Gothenburg.

In all, current plans call for the closure of five health-care centers here, and the merger of a further seven clinics into three. Such steps would have grave consequences for people living around each facility. An open letter signed by 87 doctors working in those areas states that if the closures are implemented, the remaining centers, which are already overcrowded, will not be able to provide treatment for all the patients left without a local clinic.

The attack on public, affordable health care—which for most of the postwar decades has been more comprehensive in Sweden than in many imperialist countries—is part of a drive to cut back social spending across the board.

The imposition of tight expenditure controls on local government by Stockholm—implemented through cuts in their allocations, year after year—is a favored mechanism of the Swedish rulers for carrying this out. All over the country the regional governments, or Landstings, have declared themselves in a budgetary bind and under pressure from the federal government to cut spending.

The slump in the stock market has added to the fiscal crisis. Some 12 percent of the total Landsting deficit is blamed on the decline in value of government pension funds invested there.

A heavy drain on the Landstings’ budgets has also been their drive to sign contracts with private companies to run hospitals and health clinics. Although these are private businesses, the pockets of their owners are fattened with public funds.  
 
Stockholm uses stability pact
The government says it is forced to implement “spending controls” because of its commitment to the Growth and Stability Pact agreed to by governments in the European Union. The pact sets a limit on the budget deficit of each member states.

In the name of meeting these terms, Stockholm carries out one of the most aggressive economic programs among the European imperialist powers. Having met the standard of a budget deficit of no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product, the Swedish rulers have announced a goal of reaching a surplus of 2 percent. Stage one is a 0.5 percent surplus in the budget for this year.

While all the EU powers use the pact as grounds for an assault on the social wage, a number have been unable to meet its guidelines. In fact, the governments of France, Germany, and Italy—the three largest powers in the “Eurozone”—have announced their inability to make the goals for several years running. Berlin and Paris were the chief promoters of the pact, foisting it on their smaller rivals on the continent.

Among their other problems, the French capitalists, in particular, have had to deal with at times widespread resistance to their efforts to cut the social wage in order to meet the pact’s conditions.

To date, the Swedish government has not faced the same kinds of obstacles. In 1998, without any debate and few protests, it implemented a new pension system attacking the so-called Swedish model-that is, a raft of government-provided social services that were won through the historic struggles of working people. The confusion among working people about the real meaning of this particular reform has begun to dissipate, however, as the impact of the lower benefits on recent retirees has begun to register.

Popular discontent with Stockholm’s course among working people here found one outlet in the September 2003 referendum aimed at adopting the euro. Prime Minister Göran Persson of the Social Democratic Party, who had invested much of his prestige in the campaign for a “yes” vote, was dealt an unexpected defeat.

Nonetheless, the government has not backed off its course of deeper assaults on working people’s hard-won rights. Recently it established a committee to plan further “reforms” in family allowances and benefits to disabled people and the unemployed. Persson has said that he wants these “reforms” to follow the model of the “reformed” pension system. Under the plan benefits will be divided in three: one part will be financed by the state, one will be included in union contracts, and one will be covered by private insurance.

Benefits will not be set at a fixed level, but instead there is a fixed sum allocated for these programs. Under the plan put forward, an increase in claims for disability insurance would lead to a reduction in benefit payments. The door will be open for a seamless transition, when the economic crisis deepens, into a system where individuals have to rely increasingly on private insurance.  
 
 
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