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Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Health Care Reform Articles - January 7, 2015

‘America’s Bitter Pill,’ by Steven Brill


Why did Swiss voters reject single-payer health care?

By Claudia Chaufan, M.D.
Labor Notes, Dec. 31, 2014
Supporters of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care system in the U.S. were puzzled September 27 when Swiss voters rejected a reform proposal by 62 percent.
The new law would have replaced the current system, where about 60 insurance companies offer mandatory health coverage, with a single insurer, the government. It would have offered all medically necessary care, paid for by taxes adjusted to each person’s ability to pay.
To Americans who’ve worked for such a system here, nationally and state by state, it was a blow. What’s not to like about single payer?
Swiss and American media, academia, and business sectors rushed to interpret the results. Virtually all crowed that the Swiss people had rejected government-run national health insurance because they preferred private insurers.
But these convenient interpretations rely on false assumptions to justify a model of health insurance that is unraveling—less conspicuously in Switzerland, but dramatically in the U.S.
Let’s look at what’s wrong with these pro-business interpretations, and see what lessons the Swiss referendum has for single-payer advocates here.

Mainstream Answers

Washington Post “policy wonk” Jason Millman wrote that the Swiss rejection shows that single-payer has little chance of gaining popular support in the U.S.
He notes that in 1996, the Swiss voted for an individual mandate that compels everyone to buy a basic package of health services. That law eliminated discrimination for pre-existing conditions, meaning companies have to sell equal plans at equal prices to all customers. The government subsidizes low-income people. In Millman’s view, the resulting Swiss system is very much like Obamacare.
Another policy reporter, Avi Roy from Forbesasserted that Obamacare (and Romneycare before it) was modeled on the Swiss system: people shopping among competing private plans with little government interference.
Roy says the referendum demonstrates the “political popularity” of universal coverage via private insurance. He concludes that because the Swiss have rejected single payer, there’s good reason to believe Americans will reject it, too.

What’s Wrong with the ‘Official View’?

These interpretations are based more on ideology than on facts. Why?

http://www.pnhp.org/print/news/2015/january/why-did-swiss-voters-reject-single-payer-health-care



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