Guest editorial

摘要

The Nordic health care systems, in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, are often described as communitarian systems in which society has a strong interest in, and preference for, citizen equity (see Gustavsson and Jordahl, 2008; Money and Houston, 2008). Health care in the Nordic context is regulated and supervised by the national governments, while its operations are normally funded and performed locally at the level of county councils or similar institutions. Another characteristic of the Nordic health care systems is that citizens are covered by mandatory public health insurance. However, these communitarian systems were challenged at the beginning of the 1990s.