Culture, sport and healthcare

A country must be worth living in

A society needs to care for both soul and body.

Culture gives people language, creativity, identity and belonging. Sport gives us movement, stamina, play, community and the direct experience of our own bodies.

The two cannot be separated. The football club is also culture, the choir is also community, and dance is both body and art. Civic life is one of the few places where people still learn that they need one another.

These are not activities on the sidelines of the welfare state. They are society’s human infrastructure and part of what makes Sweden worth living in.

National security is not only about how we respond to an attack. It is also about the kind of society in which people are actually expected to live their lives.

Four frigates cannot protect a coastline the length of Sweden on their own

A country that lets its culture, sport and healthcare decline has begun to weaken itself long before any external crisis has emerged.

That is why we are rejecting four hopelessly expensive and vulnerable frigates. During the parliamentary term, we will instead invest an additional SEK 40 billion in people:

• SEK 10 billion extra for culture.
• SEK 10 billion extra for sport.
• SEK 20 billion extra for better, more humane healthcare.

That is how we build a defensible Sweden and a country worth living in.

That work begins long before a person becomes a patient

The extra billions for culture and sport are not money we hand out once all serious expenses have already been paid. They are serious expenses.

A society that gives people movement, creativity, connection and meaning in life can prevent loneliness, mental ill health and disease. When these opportunities weaken, the need for healthcare and other public services also increases.

We can invest in people while life is flourishing, or pay considerably more once it has broken down.

When AI changes working life

If a job no longer carries a person’s entire identity, we need more places where they can say: this is where I belong, this is something I can do, this is where I am needed. That might be in the workshop, on the football pitch, at the swimming pool, in the choir, in the studio or in the local association. Participation and creating things for ourselves can become new sources of meaning as work’s old role changes.

AI should free up time for people

When people do need healthcare, the same principle should apply there: let AI do more of the machine-like work. It can collate medical records and test results, ease the burden of documentation and flag patterns that healthcare staff need to examine. Decisions and responsibility must remain with healthcare staff, and patients’ privacy must never be the price of efficiency.

The time AI frees up must remain with people.

A sick person needs more than accurate information. They need a hand that examines, an eye that sees the change, a nurse who notices the anxiety and a doctor who can weigh what is measurable against what cannot yet be measured. Human, tactile care is not an old-fashioned feature for AI to rationalise away. It is the whole point of allowing AI to take over the rest.

That is why culture, sport and healthcare belong together. Culture strengthens the soul, sport the body, and healthcare steps in when life nevertheless hurts or falls apart. AI can help us spend less time on repetitive information work and more time on the things people need from other people.

That is a more sensible vision of the future than building a society in which technology becomes richer and people poorer.

Implementation plan 2027–2030

2027: decide, measure and launch

Establish a joint programme for culture, sport and healthcare. The SEK 40 billion must be additional to ordinary budgets, not replace them.

• Culture: launch cultural workshops, micro-grants and longer opening hours. Introduce a joint application and measure administration.
• Sport: launch fee support, equipment banks and transport support. Measure unique participants, costs and administration.
• Healthcare: launch five clinical AI labs. Establish semantics, security requirements and baselines for duplicate data entry, patient time and quality.

2028: expand and test

• Culture: expand open-access premises, mentoring and support for the creative work of children, young people and national minorities.
• Sport: open more sports halls for drop-in sessions and taster activities. Train leaders in safety and inclusion.
• Healthcare: test AI in mammography, medical-record summaries, clinical coding and handovers, always with a human decision.

Reuse information between public bodies and remove reports that request information already available.

2029: standardise and scale up

• Culture: scale up activities with recurring participants. Introduce report-once rules and standardised calculations for small grants.
• Sport: scale up measures that increase participation and retention. Introduce person-based statistics.
• Healthcare: validate at least three workflows nationally. Remove parallel documentation where it is safe and lawful.

Publish results, costs and administrative time. Change or stop anything that does not stand up to scrutiny.

2030: national models

• Culture: make effective models national and phase out support and requirements that do not produce participation or quality.
• Sport: make effective models national. Continued support must be based on participation, reasonable costs and safety.
• Healthcare: scale up validated solutions only. Time freed up must become patient time, a better working environment and shorter waits.

Avoidable duplicate data entry and reporting must have fallen by at least 15 per cent against the 2027 baseline.

Costs

What is already known

The figure for culture is an analytical total of culture appropriations; the healthcare figure refers to the government health and medical care policy area.

• The Government, expenditure area 17 Culture, media, religious communities and leisure
• The Government, expenditure area 9 Health, medical care and social services

The SEK 40 billion addition – an open planning calculation

The extra funds will be distributed evenly over the parliamentary term. Each amount below is a planning framework, not a promise that ordinary appropriations will remain unchanged.

• Culture: SEK 2.5 billion extra per year, SEK 10 billion in total.
• Sport: SEK 2.5 billion extra per year, SEK 10 billion in total.
• Healthcare: SEK 5 billion extra per year, SEK 20 billion in total.
• Central programme administration: no more than SEK 600 million over four years. The amount is included in the SEK 40 billion framework and may not be added on top.

Each cell shows the ordinary comparison baseline + extra funds = new level, in billions of kronor:

The ordinary levels for 2027–2030 have not yet been decided. The table therefore keeps the 2026 level constant to show the size of the addition. When each year’s budget is decided, the comparison baseline will be replaced by the actual ordinary appropriation, while the addition remains on top.

Funding and revenue

The four planned frigates will not be ordered. The political framework of SEK 40 billion will be reallocated to culture, sport and healthcare during 2027–2030.

The programme generates no certain direct revenue. The effects of culture and sport will not be booked as healthcare savings. Time freed up in healthcare becomes a budget saving only when an actual cost falls without lower quality.

Existing government grants, municipal or regional co-financing and EU funds must not be counted twice. New revenue will be reported only once binding decisions exist.

The hidden administration

Core operations, system functions, internal administration and embedded information work must be reported separately. Supervision and patient safety must not be wrongly labelled unnecessary bureaucracy.

Small cultural grants should have short applications and reports. Sport must distinguish between membership, activities and unique individuals. Healthcare must measure duplicate data entry and parallel systems in kronor and working time.

A new reporting requirement should normally replace an old one. Existing information should be reused where the law permits.

What we know

• SEK 40 billion is to be added on top of ordinary budgets: 10 for culture, 10 for sport and 20 for healthcare.
• The annual addition will be 2.5 billion for culture, 2.5 billion for sport and 5 billion for healthcare.
• The 2026 government comparison baselines are approximately 9.62 billion for culture, 2.15 for sport and 81.63 for health and medical care policy.

What we do not know

• The exact ordinary appropriations for 2027–2030 and the net saving after commitments already made on the frigates.
• The exact distribution between the state, regions, municipalities, institutions, associations and healthcare providers.
• How large a budget saving reduced administration can produce without lower quality or safety.

Decide now

responsible intelligence in politics proposes launching the Culture, Sport and Healthcare programme in 2027 with an additional framework of SEK 40 billion: 10 for culture, 10 for sport and 20 for healthcare.

The addition will be paid out at SEK 10 billion per year. Further expansion requires open reporting of use, quality, costs and hidden administration.

The principle is simple: report what we know, mark out what we are calculating and ensure that every extra billion delivers more creativity, more movement or more human time in healthcare.