[Sosfbay-discuss] Single-Payer's Trojan Horse: Switzerland

[Edward]

As many of you have heard, the Obama Administration's public option may be in jeopardy due to Senator Conrad's (and 2 Democrats and 3 Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee) proposal of "health cooperatives". If you have seen the Frontline documentary "Sick Around the World," I would hope that you too were irked by the concluding segment on Switzerland and their system, which resembles Conrad's proposal. It is very appealing to those like Senator Conrad and is a Trojan Horse for single-payer advocates.

Do NOT be deceived! Switzerland is still unable to achieve universal health care coverage, although proponents will want to attract single-payer advocates by claiming (truthfully) that Switzerland has one of highest life expectancies in the world and that health cooperatives can help achieve nearly 100% coverage when competing with existing private insurers. The Swiss model is just about as effective in providing comprehensive coverage as condoms are in preventing pregnancies. Instead of leaving 20 million without health insurance, as would be the case under Obama's current "public option" plan, only about 7 million would be uninsured under Conrad's plan, assuming that the United States cannot better the existing situation in Switzerland.

However, what they will not tell you is that Switzerland spends the most on health care in the world aside from the United States and is one of three industrialised countries (i.e. United States, Switzerland, and Germany) to spend more than 10% of its GDP annually on health care. While insurers are not allowed to make a profit from basic health benefits, they find other ways to profit such as providing "actuarially priced supplementary benefits". In other words, hospitals would be like airplanes: first-class and coach with the former containing all the bells and whistles while the latter only has the basics.

Above all, health cooperatives in the United States will do little to solve the health care crisis, because private insurers will not be affected by health cooperatives. We need to continue our push for single-payer and increase our efforts to debunk myths arising from health cooperatives.

-edward



      
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