How much do you currently have to pay for medicine in Sweden?
Healthcare in Sweden is mainly tax-funded, with the idea being that all citizens should be able to get equal access to the same services.
If you do have to pay for treatment, Sweden has something called högkostnadsskydd, which literally translates as “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.
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Currently you get a 50 percent discount on the cost of additional prescription medicine once you've passed the total of 1,450 kronor in a year (calculated as 12 months from the date you first paid for medication). There is a 75 percent discount on spending over 2,108 kronor, and a 90 percent discount on additional spending once you've passed the 2,702 kronor mark.
Once you've passed 2,900 kronor, you get a 100 percent discount – or in other words, there is no cost for any additional medicine in the next 12 months. In 2024, that figure was 2,850 kronor, so that’s a slight increase since the beginning of 2025.
This increase is an automatic change due to an increase in the prisbasbelopp, a figure used by the government to calculate various fees, benefits and caps which is updated at the beginning of each year in line with inflation.
When is it going to get more expensive, and by how much?
Under a new proposal, the government wants to raise the top cap for a 100 percent discount from 2,900 kronor to 3,800 kronor, meaning that you’d need to fork over an extra 900 kronor per year to reach the threshold when your additional medicine will be free.
The government also wants to change the way the discount works, so that the first threshold would only trigger a discount of 25 percent, rather than the 50 percent which currently applies.
The threshold amounts for each discount rate will also be raised, so you’ll have to pay more out of pocket before you qualify.
Under the new rules, you’d get:
- A 25 percent discount on spending above 2,000 kronor (instead of a 50 percent discount from 1,450 kronor),
- A 75 percent discount on spending above 3,190 kronor (up from 2,108 kronor),
- A 90 percent discount after paying 3,619 kronor (up from 2,702 kronor),
- A 100 percent discount after paying 3,800 kronor (up from 2,900).
The proposal is set to come into force on July 1st, 2025, although the previous rules will apply to people who already have a högkostnadsskydd period which began before that date.
- SEE MORE: How the Swedish healthcare system works
Why are they doing this?
According to the law proposal, the new changes will cost patients in the country an extra 540 million kronor in 2025, 2,160 million kronor in 2026 and 2,700 million kronor from 2027, which will be used to “improve the possibility of sustainable financing of the cost of medicine”.
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