(CNN) In his search for examples of a more equitable society, Bernie Sanders has long looked north … to Northern Europe, that is.
The “Nordic model” consists of strong welfare states funded by relatively high levels of taxation, which enable governments to provide high-quality education and health care for all. Sanders, an independent US senator from Vermont who’s a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, says the United States could learn from this.
“I want to thank the Finnish people not just for what they are doing but for giving us a vision, and a model that we in this country can attain to as well,” he told a crowd in Vermont back in 2008.
In 2017, Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, praised neighboring Denmark’s health care system, saying, “They are able to run a high-quality health care system — probably better than ours — at half the cost. Because it’s a public health care system.”
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| Democratic presidential hopeful and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks on healthcare in Washington, DC. |
A publicly run and funded health care system — known as “Medicare for All” — is now one of the senator’s big ideas as a candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination, and he still appears to be drawing inspiration from the Nordic model, recently referencing the low cost of delivering a baby in Finland on Twitter.
Of course, drawing comparisons between a country like Finland (which has the population of Minnesota) and the entire United States is difficult. No health care system — rooted as each country’s is in both its history and geography — could ever provide a perfect model for the other.
Source: Saskya Vandoorne and Melissa Bell | CNN
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