Swiss Reject More Government in Health Care

Published September 30, 2014

One of the things both advocates and opponents of nationalized health care in the U.S. often fail to understand is that there is a wide range of universal health care systems offered by different countries. In my opinion one of the reasons is that advocates of government-run health care intentionally blur the issue by claiming that “every industrialized nation except the U.S. has universal health care” and then talking about the single-payer systems in Canada and the U.K. as if universal health care and single payer were synonymous.

The news out of Switzerland over the weekend helps to reinforce that there are many ways to get ensure that everybody has access to the health care they need. Advocates of nationalized health care in Switzerland suffered a major defeat over the weekend, as their fellow Swiss rejected their call for the government to take over their private-run system (which still does include substantial government involvement):

Swiss reject switch from private to state health insurance

Swiss voters on Sunday rejected a plan for a seismic shift from the country’s all-private health insurance system to a state-run scheme.

Referendum results showed that almost 62 percent of voters had shot down a reform pushed by left-leaning parties which say the current private system is busting the budgets of ordinary residents…

Going public would have been a major shift for a country whose health system is often hailed abroad as a paragon of efficiency, but is a growing source of frustration at home because of soaring costs.

“Over the past 20 years in Switzerland, health costs have grown 80 percent and insurance premiums 125 percent,” ophthalmologist Michel Matter told AFP…

The Swiss system has many problems, but it’s nice to see the people of that country haven’t fallen for the siren song of nationalized health care quite yet.