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The Nordic countries have come to play an outsized role in the American political imagination. Denmark, a country of six million people, roughly the size of Wisconsin, is by now used to being called out by both the American left and right as an example of a socialist country.

For Democratic Socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it’s an example of an ideal system worth trying to emulate at home. For Fox News commentators and the Trump administration, it’s mentioned alongside Venezuela and has been featured in an administration report on the opportunity costs of socialism.

There’s just one problem. The Nordic countries don’t see themselves as socialist. In fact, that $1,000 a month Ozempic prescription everyone’s talking about? It comes courtesy of Novo Nordisk, a Danish company listed on the Copenhagen and New York Stock exchanges with the highest valuation of any company in Europe.

While its profits are taxed to help fund government programs, if that’s socialism, then maybe America is already socialist. The U.S. corporate tax rate is 21 percent and the Danish corporate tax rate is 22 percent. Danish companies can hire and fire at will and there are no minimum wage laws.

On Today’s podcast we get a different perspective on the Nordic countries and socialism from an actual Nordic socialist. Pelle Dragsted is a member of Danish Parliament and leader of the country’s furthest left party in parliament, the Red-Green Alliance.

In 2021, he wrote the book “Nordic Socialism: The Path Toward A Democratic Economy” in response to the attention his country’s system was getting and as an argument for socialism. It’s now been translated into English.

The video version of this podcast is available to paid subscribers here.

There’s little doubt that America faces a health conundrum. We spent nearly 18 percent of GDP on health in 2023. The average per person was $13,400 dollars, roughly double the amount spent in comparable countries.

Meanwhile, the results are lacking. American life expectancy at birth is 78 years, about 5 years shorter than the average of similar countries. And nearly 75 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, with 12 percent having diabetes.

I could keep citing statistics, but you get the point.

The Trump administration has set out to, in its own words, “Make America Healthy Again.” And while the similarly named commission’s first report got a lot of attention for faulty citations, it’s also surprisingly blunt about some of the challenges the country faces. Perhaps more so than any other recent administration.

That blunt assessment, though, has been paired with changes that critics say pose more challenges to American health: funding cuts to the Food and Drug Administration, cuts to research on things like the impact of chemicals on health, changes to eligibility for medicaid, food stamps, and Affordable Care Act subsidies, and replacing the vaccine advisory panel at the CDC.

American health finds itself in a position not so different from other issues under President Trump. An administration that is more candid about naming the problem than many others in politics, but with some controversial and even self-defeating solutions.

With me to talk about it all is the dean of the school of public health at Washington University in St. Louis, Sandro Galea. He’s authored many books and also writes about public health on the Substack “The Healthiest Goldfish.”

The full episode and video are available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here.

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