Search This Blog

8/30/2013

Free Trade and (Not So) Free Health Care: A Discussion in Advance of President Obama’s Visit to Sweden

President Obama will travel to Stockholm, Sweden, for a September 4-5 visit en route to the G20 Summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.


Obama will have a bilateral meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Fedrik Reinfeldt, to be followed by a working dinner with Nordic Heads of State from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland.

The agenda for the meetings is likely to include a discussion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP—a proposed free trade agreement between the United States and the European Union) as well as social welfare issues.

It is likely that President Obama will want to discuss Sweden’s nationalized health care system, since Americans’ uncertainty about Obamacare is increasing just as the law is nearing full implementation.

The pro-free-market Timbro Foundation of Sweden and The Heritage Foundation will be hosting our own conversation about the upcoming visit and these issues.

We invite you to join us for a Google+ Hangout this Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern Time (8 p.m. in Sweden). You can watch it live here—the live broadcast will be embedded in this post.

We’ll be discussing what should be on the leaders’ meeting agenda, as well as Sweden’s overall export dependence and history of private choice in its public-sector health system.

heritage.org

No comments:

Post a Comment