How much do you have to pay for healthcare in Sweden?

When do you have to pay for healthcare?

Healthcare in Sweden is mainly tax-funded, as the idea is that all citizens should be able to get equal access to the same services.

If you visit a healthcare centre (vårdcentral) and are treated by a doctor, you should expect to pay between 100 and 300 kronor, with visits to Accident and Emergency (akuten) costing around 220 to 400 kronor, depending on region. If you’re treated by a nurse instead of a doctor, you’ll usually pay less.

There are also some types of healthcare which are completely free - this includes visits to child healthcare centres (BVC), midwife centres during pregnancy, regular mammography screenings for over 40s, and cervical cancer screenings for those aged 23 and above.

In addition to this, anyone over the age of 85 has free healthcare, and in most regions, children and young people aged below 20 don’t have to pay anything, either. There are also no fees for school nurses - including vaccinations given in school - or treatment for particular contagious illnesses considered a danger to public health, like gonorrhoea, HIV, chlamydia, salmonella, hepatitis, syphilis or tuberculosis. 

If you don’t fall into one of the groups of people with free healthcare, you will also usually have to pay for your prescriptions too.

What if I have to pay for healthcare?

If you do have to pay for treatment, you should be aware that Sweden has something called högkostnadsskydd, literally “high cost protection”. 

This means that after your medical costs reach a certain cap each year (the exact amount can vary between regions), it's free to visit doctors and other healthcare staff. There's also a cost ceiling for prescription medicines, as well as a cost ceiling for hospital visits, which all work in different ways.

For outpatient care, the maximum is 1,400 kronor in 2024, although some regions may have a lower limit. This means that if you hit this cap within a 12-month period from the date of your first visit, you won’t need to pay any more medical fees until the end of the 12-month period.

Let’s say you visit the medical centre on January 29th. By August 5th, you’ve paid 1,400 kronor in outpatient fees. This means you qualify for waived fees, also known as frikort, and you won’t pay any more fees until January 28th the following year.

For hospital visits, you’ll pay a maximum of 130 kronor per day, with further discounts in some regions for people who need to be hospitalised for longer periods.

What about medicines?

For prescription medicines, the cap is 2,850 kronor in 2024, although some medicines, like insulin for diabetics, as well as prescriptions for under-18s, are always free. Contraception is also often free or discounted for young people (usually free until 21 and discounted until 25) - that includes contraception which can be picked up at a pharmacy, as well as things like IUDs which need to be installed by a medical professional.

You also won’t need to pay for any tools used to administer your medicine, such as syringes or blood sugar tests.

The frikort for prescriptions works slightly differently than for outpatient fees. You pay full price up to 1,425 kronor, after which you’ll pay a discounted fee starting at 50 percent and dropping gradually to 10 percent of the cost of your prescription, until you’ve paid a total of 2,850 kronor. You’ll then pay nothing until 12 months have passed since the first transaction.

Although a doctor might prescribe you a specific brand of medicine, your pharmacist will often offer you a cheaper version from another brand with the same ingredients, dosage and effectiveness, if it's available. It's your decision whether you accept this or not.

The frikort for prescriptions is applied automatically, and as all pharmacies are connected to the same database, you get the same discount no matter which pharmacy you visit.

You can also log in to Läkemedelskollen with BankID to check the dates for your current qualifying period, how much you’ve already paid and how much is left before you hit the cap.

Are vaccines free?

It depends. Flu and Covid-19 vaccines are often free or discounted for older people and at-risk groups, and as a general rule vaccines for children are also free, with the exception of vaccines needed for travel.

The exact discount and age brackets, as well as the range of free vaccines, vary between regions, so again you should find out from your doctor what you're eligible for.

• READER QUESTION: Can I get the flu vaccine for free in Sweden?

So, what’s the maximum I should expect to pay per year?

Obviously it depends on the region, but if we assume that you don’t pay for any vaccines and you don’t spend any time in hospital, the maximum you would have to spend on healthcare would be 1,400 kronor for medical fees plus 2,850 kronor for prescriptions, giving you a total of 4,250 kronor in a 12-month period. That’s around $400, £320 or €375 at the time of writing.

You’re only likely to reach this figure if you visit the doctor more than four times a year and have at least one regular prescription, meaning that if you’re in relatively good health you’ll probably end up paying less. Obviously, though, you never know what the future brings, so it’s good to be aware of the maximum you'd need to spend if your health ever worsened.