Switzerland rejects single-payer in landslide, keeps its version of Obamacare

[Gothmog]

Link to tweet

Swiss voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to move the country to a single-payer system on Sunday. Instead, the country will keep its private health insurance system, which looks a whole lot like Obamacare.

Two-thirds of Swiss voters opposed creating a state-run health plan in the national referendum. The issue was put to a vote after Swiss campaigners gathered more than 100,000 signatures, the threshold for getting a national vote; some initial polls in 2013 had shown strong support for a state-run system.

For a country with a relatively small population (8 million), Switzerland comes up a shocking amount in debates over American health care. That's probably because the Swiss health care system looks pretty similar to the one Obamacare sets up.

Since 1996, Switzerland has required all residents purchase coverage through an individual mandate. "If you move to Switzerland, you have three months to buy coverage and it's retroactive to your arrival," Aaron Carroll explains in his excellent video primer on the Swiss health care system.

Swiss residents buy coverage from private health insurance plans, who compete for their business. The average monthly premium for adults, in American dollars, was $329 in 2013. There are no pre-existing conditions in Switzerland; insurers are only allowed to vary premiums based on age, charging different rates for children under 18, young adults between 19 and 25, and adults over 25.

[George II]

1. ooops.

[Thekaspervote]

2. Bernie, aoc, sirota, turner and all those that were fooled...are you listening?

[msongs]

3. medicare with an advantage policy is cheaper than the swiss price nt

[Demsrule86]

8. No it isn't...the deductibles and copays are pretty high...by sis in law owes over a 1200. and she

pays over 370.00...so hubs and I are looking at over 600 a month in Medicare in retirement..and seniors are already not able to afford Medicare.

[Hoyt]

28. Medicare beneficiaries have been paying in for decades, which would

need to be factored into cost comparison.

[brewens]

4. We could easily be happy with a plan like that. As long as workers still got the part of their pay

medical insurance represents.

[beastie boy]

6. The question doesn't seem honest to me

It's implication is that the OP had posted for a nepharious reason of some sort. This is getting personal for no good reason.

As far as the purpose of this discussion forum, it doesn't make one bit of difference what personal affiliations the OP may choose to have. None of my friggin business.

The post has certain information that you are free to address, or not address. Don't take it out on the messenger.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

7. +1

[Cha]

10. Oohhh.. Thanks for that.

[betsuni]

9. K&R

[zak247]

11. Medicare is NOT free

People don’t realize Medicare IS NOT FREE. First off, one pays about 144 a month for WHAT THEY CALL PART B

Then if you don't want to go bankrupt(since medicare doesn't pay everything) if you really get sick you have to buy a supplemental policy called Medigap. Which doesn’t have dental or prescription drugs, if you want that you have to pay more.

So you're talking 200 to 300 hundred a month.

So, does Bernie calculate that fee in his program? I doubt it. Just making Medicare really free would be a great advancement. And would alone cost trillions, let alone adding all the whole country.

We can build on what we have and follow the Swiss.

[thesquanderer]

13. MFA as proposed is similar to Medicare in that it is a single payer, government run system, BUT...

...it is NOT the same as current Medicare. It would be financed differently. It would include dental and prescription drugs. Copays/deductibles/premiums are all either eliminated or greatly reduced. Among other differences. So while there are criticisms one could make about it, the ones you mention don't apply.

[Celerity]

14. Sanders just uses the Medicare name for its familiarity draw.

His actual programme is vastly different.

[George II]

16. Precisely. His plan is nothing like the existing Medicare system. He's co-opted the name...

...to prey on uninformed voters. He also doesn't mention that people who are on Medicare don't get it free.

[Celerity]

17. He has a bad tendency to falsely mislabel, his biggest error was to cling to his self-labelling as a

democratic socialist, which I have went on ad nauseam about in the past.

[Hekate]

37. I know a low-income senior who is scraping by every month to keep up w her Medicare payments....

She told me how she went to a cheaper plan during open enrollment a couple of years ago, only to encounter a really unpleasant gatekeeper, so she changed back. The lack of dental alone drains what's left of her savings.

[BidenBacker]

12. Odd

I woulda thought that healthcare would be free for all the Swiss, considering how much plundered Nazi gold their bankers squirreled away...

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/historical-book_from-nazis-to-refineries--how-switzerland-has-handled-the-world-s-gold/45037968

Poor investments, I guess.

[mvd]

15. The Swiss tend to be wealthy and are generally healthier than we are

So it can work better there. There are still differences in cost per person. It isn’t as predatory as our system. So while Obamacare was a step up, it wasn’t near the system we should have. Neither the Swiss plan nor Obamacare is any proof that we shouldn’t have a single payer system.

[Gothmog]

18. Why did sanders plan fail in Vermont?

A deep-blue state’s failure to enact a single-payer system shows why a national version is unlikely to succeed. www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/opinion/bernie-sanders-single-payer.html

Link to tweet

The first problem for any single-payer push would be political support: Mr. Shumlin campaigned on a promise to build a single-payer system in Vermont, but the public never quite bought in. An April 2014 survey showed 40 percent support, 39 percent opposition and 21 percent undecided — a lukewarm result for such a major undertaking. That year, Mr. Shumlin barely won the popular vote against an anti-single-payer Republican. As John E. McDonough of Harvard wrote in a perceptive New England Journal of Medicine analysis of the plan’s collapse, “a clear public mandate” for Mr. Shumlin’s health care agenda “was nowhere in evidence.”

One reason the plan lacked strong support was lawmakers were cagey about how to pay for it. The 2011 proposal included no specific financing mechanism, because Mr. Shumlin’s team worried that might kill its chances.

Initial cost estimates were far too optimistic. A 2011 study led by William Hsiao of Harvard found that single-payer could reduce state health care spending by 8 percent to 12 percent immediately and more in later years, resulting in about $2 billion in savings over a decade. But by the time Mr. Shumlin ditched the plan, internal government estimates showed a five-year savings of just 1.6 percent.....

The Vermont plan was done in by high taxes, distrust of government and lack of political support. Any effort by a Sanders administration to enact a single-payer system at a national level would probably be doomed by similar problems.....

But if it couldn’t work in Vermont, with a determined governor, an accommodating legislature and progressive voters, Mr. Sanders will have a tough time explaining why it will somehow succeed on a vastly larger scale. Vermont represents a practical failure on friendly turf, and that is what makes it such a powerful counter to Mr. Sanders’s proposal.

“If Vermont can pass a strong single-payer system and show it works well, it will not only be enormously important to this state, it will be a model,” Mr. Sanders said in 2013.

As it turns out, it was a model. But instead of showing us how it would work, it showed us why it would fail.

0
sanders plan was a complete failure in Vermont which is why this plan will not work nationwide.

[mvd]

20. That was a legislative failure

They could have afforded it but never got the courage. All they needed to do it pass the tax plan to fund it.

[Gothmog]

22. Denial is not just a river in Africa

The plan failed because it was a horrible plan that could not be paid for in the real world

[mvd]

33. Wrong

It wasn’t implemented so we can’t say that.

No more from me in this dated thread. We obviously aren’t going to agree.

[Gothmog]

35. sanders utterly and completely failed to get his magical plan adopted in Vermont

sanders failed utterly and completely to get his plan adopted in his home state. If sanders cannot get his magical plan adopted in his home state, how will sanders hope to succeed in the real world?

[Hortensis]

40. All this talk as if the Republicans and conservative half

of the nation don't exist and Democrats could just pass anything we choose is bizarrely delusional.

The enormous obstacles of voter wishes, a very popular national healthcare system already in place and standing, unfinished, against enormous attempts to destroy, a replacement (!) system that's years away from even being written up as a bill and currently only a political wedge issue to run on, and the great RW power blocs aside, , it doesn't seem to occur that the latest big cases on their way to SCOTUS could generate decisions effectively declaring critical provisions in what would be the MfA, not just the ACA, unconstitutional.

[ehrnst]

24. So what kept them from passing "the tax plan to fund it?"

Sanders refusing to talk about it indicates that he either doesn't know or doesn't care about why it failed, in a very homogenous state that had the political will to send him to the Senate twice.

Not a good look.

[Gothmog]

36. Societal savings are not tax revenues and cannot be used to pay for a plan in the real world

The plan fell apart because you have to raise taxes in the real world to pay for such a plan. Hypothetical societal savings are not tax revenues and cannot be used to pay for a plan

[ehrnst]

41. I understand that the instant "uprising of the proletariat" upon Sanders' swearing in

will make all that sort of talk irrelevant, and the GOP will be cowed into submission and will all suddenly support Bernie's plans in fear for their jobs...

[Gothmog]

42. Without a magical voter revolution, none of sanders agenda can be adopted

I never took sanders to be a serious candidate due to sanders’ complete lack of any significant legislative accomplishments in the real world. I do not understand how magic works in the real world but I note that sanders has not increased voter turnout in the real world

[ehrnst]

44. Yep...

[GulfCoast66]

29. It's not That they lacked courage. It's that they know math.

Many of the best healthcare system in the world, like France or Germany have plans closer to a ramped up ACA than a system like MFA.

[ehrnst]

43. So what is preventing a "legislative failure" to pass a tax plan M4A at the federal level?

If the representatives in the small, homegenous population of Vermont that had the political will to send him to DC "didn't have the courage" do it, why are we supposed to believe that the representatives of a much more diverse and huge population will be "have the courage" to do so?

[ehrnst]

26. Bernie gets very testy when asked about what lessons are to be learned from Green Mountain Care

One would think he would be ready with the data and the proposed solutions to those issues on a federal level.

Instead it's usually a "Well look, I'm not going to speculate on something like that... but let me just say this if I'm elected, I know there will be an uprising to support me and the GOP will get on board with what I want them to do in order to keep their jobs..."

[musette_sf]

19. "The Swiss tend to be wealthy"?

No - the Swiss infrastructure allows working people to NOT live lives of desperation.

[mvd]

21. True about the infrastructure but they are more well off overall

Many here would consider it wealthy.

[musette_sf]

23. Um.

That's because of their infrastructure.

[ehrnst]

25. +1000.

[mvd]

32. ?

Response makes no sense.

[GulfCoast66]

30. Maybe one reason they are wealthy is because they have a common sense Healthcare system?

Rather than a MFA thingie.

They obviously think so.

First Denmark tells Bernie to stop calling them socialist and next one of the nations he holds up as an example rejected his type of system.

I agree we need to imitate western and Northern European systems. Problem is, they are not the systems Bernie pushes.

[mvd]

31. Definitely not the reason

I think I have defended it enough here. We obviously aren’t going to agree. Medicare For All is one of the legitimate options. It doesn’t have to be the only option, but it is a good option.

[GulfCoast66]

34. Well. We actually agree. I'm not intrinsically against MFA.

But I truly don’t think it is the best option to insure universal healthcare. And is the one I can see no way to implement.

I support Biden, which I guess I some minds make me a moderate. But Remember we all support universal healthcare.

I do not see you as the enemy. Just a ally who has a different opinion on the way to get to the place we all want to be.

Have a nice evening. And stay safe. I don’t know your age and not asking. But so many DU members are at risk. If I believed in prayer I would pray I never hear about a DU member succumbing to the virus.

And don’t leave. I know you are outnumbered here. But the party needs some leftward pushing in these times.

[oasis]

27. Whoomp there it is.

[Hekate]

38. Wow. Go, Swiss.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

39. Guess they didn't feel the revolution

What else do you expect from a nation of bankers?