Anne-Geneviève Bütikofer, director of the Swiss Hospital Association, H+, is opening the door to a single health insurance scheme. "The pressure is so great that a revolution seems inevitable," she says.
A single health insurer may not be the right solution, "but it's worth considering", said Anne-Geneviève Bütikofer in an interview with Swiss newspaper Sonntags Blick on Sunday.
"If 2.5 million people change health insurer every year, at a cost of CHF800 ($882) to CHF1,000 per change, we have already found our potential savings of several billion. The discussions surrounding the single health insurance scheme are therefore legitimate," she said.
Higher hospital charges
Despite the high cost of healthcare for the population, "we are calling for a 5% increase in all hospital charges", says Anne-Geneviève Bütikofer. "The rise in prices must finally be taken into account.”
According to the director, however, these increases should not be reflected in health insurance premiums. "I wonder whether we are financing the right things in the system with the right sources of funding."
"Today, all hospital services are funded by compulsory health insurance," she adds, stressing that there are no additional sources of remuneration for new expenditure.
Curious if anyone here would care to educate on American on how the Swiss healthcare system works currently? I assume there's universal coverage already, but I don't know how it works.
Insurance is privatized with many providers, however the 'base insurance' covers the same at all providers and is mandatory to have for all residents. However base insurance prices still vary between providers every year, so people are encouraged to switch the provider regularily, which is a business on its own with brokers / call centers getting bonuses for every 'sign up', which means a lot of wasted money:
https://www.emolument.com/salary-reports/jobs/insurance-broker/45892
That sounds like what the US tried to do with the individual mandate when the ACA (Obamacare) went through. Honestly, I'm surprised. I didn't realize there were systems like that in Europe. I thought pretty much everywhere there had nationalized healthcare.
Healthcare in Europe is not equal across borders.
https://www.goodrx.com/hcp/providers/healthcare-system-designs#
Has a good rundown of the systems
I was also surprised when I moved to the Netherlands. Healthcare and insurance work exactly like they do in the US, with private insurance, copays, deductibles, additional plans for dental/vision... The differences are that the prices of everything are much, much lower.
Yeah it's similar to that, but with more regulated negotation and price controls.
Another aspect is that price negotiation for medecine is done done by the government. This is different from the USA where even Medicare doesn't have the right to negotiate it's price's.
Private insurers also get some of their insured redistributed between them by the government so that one insurer doesn't take all the expensive cases.