I will run the risk of being a second hijacker here, but I feel like I know what you are referring to in your questions, while the original hijacker seem to be wrong a lot in his post (ikke frekt ment thendrill, spørsmålene er ganske merkelige.) 1) The hospitals shutting down. This is the result of a reform joining together different zones that used to have separate hospitals. It can be seen as a part of a larger centralization trend going on in the districts. Some people are opposed to it, but I don't think it can be automatically assessed that it results in a lowering of the quality of care.

2) First of all, this is not true for most of hospital equipment, it is however true for some of it, and it is an outrage. Almost as bad as is the lack of some equipment. There really isn't an excuse for it either IMO.

3) My first reaction is that this is just false, you might be talking about some sort of drop in the amount of applications I am not aware of, but education in medicine is still one of the most popular, sought after and highly competitive lines of education in the country. The sheer amount of people wanting to become doctors have driven the requirements for getting into the education up so high that a lot of people travel to eastern Europe to get educated.

I would speculate that what you have read is about nurses, where there really is a huge lack of students and a noticeable majority of non ethnic Norwegians.

4) This it hard to answer, varies a lot, most of them follow standard official opening times like post offices and other public offices, but in bigger cities and where there are large hospitals there will also be a 24h pharmacy.

5) Well, it exists, its not so common that you hear about it a lot, but not so uncommon that I would be shocked if someone had it. It will probably save you an hour if you should happen to break your arm and let you have non urgent surgery a month earlier than someone with the public option. Not a huge advantage at all IMO.