Posted on 01/17/2014 3:43:32 PM PST by lowbridge
Switzerland and Singapore achieve universal coverage while spending a fraction of what we spend, and they ensure broad access to high-quality doctors and the latest technology.
Switzerland has a system of universal, subsidized private insurance exchanges that look much like Paul Ryan'sMedicare-reform plan and Obamacare's exchanges. Unlike Obamacare, however, the Swiss exchanges actually work. In Switzerland, there are no public options or government insurers like Medicare or Medicaid. Everyone is in the private system. The poor get a premium support subsidy that covers the cost of their premium; as one moves up the income ladder, the size of the subsidy decreases. Wealthy and upper-middle-class Swiss get no subsidy at all.
The Swiss system is no libertarian utopia; its exchanges contain some of the unattractive features of Obamacare, like an individual mandate and excessively broad benefit requirements. Nonetheless, as a percentage of GDP, Swiss public spending on health coverage is 60 percent lower than America's. If we had the Swiss system, we wouldn't have a budget deficit and we'd have no single-payer health entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid.
From a fiscal standpoint, Singapore is far better than even Switzerland. Singapores public spending on health care as a fraction of GDP is 86 percent lower than Americas. Thats because every Singaporean has a health savings account, which is used to pay for non-catastrophic medical expenses. Singaporeans pay a payroll tax, which is then redirected into the HSA in a manner similar to our Social Security system. But unlike Social Security, the Singaporean HSA is controlled by the individual and supplemented with a government-sponsored catastrophic coverage plan.
The bottom line is that Singapore and Switzerland spend far less on health care than we do and yet achieve all of the things that Americans value about their own system: choice, technology and physician access.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Switzerland does something right.
My understanding is.
concerning non(or expired) patented drugs.
SW gives a price list to drug companies,
they agree to the entire list,
or do not do business in the country.
no more hospitals dispensing Tylenol
at $36 a pop.
Still ‘developed’ here, just hidden behind global corporations. Profits are still realized mostly from us, the US.
What are their policies on end of life care? About half of your lifetime medical expenses are spent in the last year. Add a government "death panel", a refusal to pay "unreasonable" efforts at delaying death (however the insurance company defines unreasonable), or even a society which accepts that life has come to an end and allows old people to die at home with family rather than attached to very expensive machines which go "ping" and you can drop national medical expenses. I don't like the idea of either a government or insurance bureaucrat deciding it is time for me to go, especially if they decide that they could save half by restricting medical care in the last year they could save even more by restricting it in the last five or ten years.
And where to you think those drug companies obtain their profits? Hint: we in the US are still paying that ‘$36 a pop’. Switzerland profits and we pay for it.....
Uninsured medical bills are typically paid in the range of 3 to 7 percent and the balance written off. So deals like that are basically a way to subsidize the non-payers.
You still have pesky illegals singing about climbing every mountain and crossing every border. :-)
Both of those places
A) Benefit from R&D subsidized from the ability to monopolistically charge for items/pharmaceuticals here.
B) Have a far lower freeloader to productive person ratio.
C) Have a lot few people than here.
Yea, like welfare in general. The ones who support it but never use it are the elitists who want the serfs using it to not riot and burn their crap down after they got them hooked on a cycle of dependancy in order to bring themselves to power...
Very well stated and 100% correct!
nascar.....
health insurance is destroying the middle class
in the US.
something has to give.
or people will vote away their freedom
at the ballot box.
I can already tell this statist is Globalist, Free Trader, Statist, Anti-Soverignty, and a whole mess of other things not Conservative.
Even the liberals in Socialized Medicine nations know Socialized Medicine does not work. And we have BOTH PARTIES in the US pushing ObamaCare
The GOP was founded by “progressives”.
The more you look at healthcare, the more you realize that the less government intervention, the better. The poor should have some sort of safety net, but that’s it. Prices will go down if people have to pay for it themselves.
Lets face it, if people could take better care of themselves, nutrition was emphasized, and governments didn’t try to sabotage health by putting fluoride in the water, pushing vaccines with aluminum, mercury, SV40, and formaldehyde, and labeling GMO foods, we would all be a lot healthier.
Hmm.. and another big question no one seems to be answering.. How many new drugs/treatments/etc have been developed within Switzerland or Singapore? How many in the US?
Small summary from 2010:
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/11/09/where_drugs_come_from_by_country.php
And about a third of the way down the page you have some tables:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Research_and_development
The word “conservative” is being stretched beyond all meaning, a favorite tool of the left regarding language. One more piece of evidence in my case that the putative right has been infiltrated by the left, infiltration being another of their favored, and quite successful, tactics. I have never before seen so many historically leftist positions being touted as “conservative” with a twist of the word.
I belive the right, including the Republican party, is riddled with them. You could say the right now looks like Swiss cheese, full of leftist holes.
Insurance companies ought to be forced to have reserves equal to 100% of their liability. The same with banks and casinos.
They are using percent of GDP figures, not actual dollars.
The Singapore Health Savings Accounts makes sense to me. But then again, there is not a high percent of population living totally off government handouts there like we have here. They have a very productive, very law abiding population with virtually no drug abuse, fatherless children, or politicians buying elections with taxpayer dollars.
Singapore is about as far away from a homogenious population as you can get. It likely has the most 'diverse' population in the world.
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