As Google Health and Microsoft's Healthvault solutions get out there and as health care devices hit the market I see the Nordic model being challenged to meet newer forms of interaction between medical professionals and consumers. Can the model scale?
"Scaling up" and "scaling out" are terms with origins from the IT world (see scalability). However, in a non-IT context like health care, these terms have the same meaning and implications. What Obama plans to do with his health care plan appears to be taking the Nordic model (20 million people in 4 countries) and scaling it up to meet the needs of the US (approx. 300 million people).
Can the Obama health care plan deliver? on what timeline? I am not a political pundit but I am more interested in the implementation challenges in making such a thing happen. Therefore I think it would be mutually innovative for an Obama (or Clinton) administration to collaborate with the Nordic countries - to swap practices and develop new concepts for health care and insurance.
The Nordic model could do with an overhaul with input from a commercial, privatised perspective and the Democrats model can learn from a time-tested governmental welfare model. The welfare model as practiced in the Nordic countries, gives its residents a legal right to healthcare (in Norway this is legislated through Chapter 5 of the Folketrygdeloven - social insurance law, in Sweden there are similar laws.)
