Then put a cap on that, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater! 
Competition is useful.
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I think you are getting confused here (at least with what I wrote).
The problem with the Swiss system being bureaucratically heavy and extremely inefficient and therefore expensive has got little to do with the healthcare - it’s the insurance companies causing this.
How much of your premium each month is going to fund the insurance companies’ salaries, CEO bonuses, smart offices and so on?
Keep the insurance-based system but lose the inefficiency which ultimately we are all paying for.
Competition, if it works, should drive down prices. This is not happening.
It’s more like a cartel where the multitude of insurance companies get to fix the price.
Are you saying the pharmacies should do this work for free?
I’m pretty sure there’s hidden work involved with issuing prescriptions - paperwork audits for controlled drugs as well as the visible ones.
Perhaps the doctors could do some operations for free too?
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Agreed. I think putting the cap of “prices can only rise inline with inflation” makes sense. The 10% not so much, because even if it’s a cap it will become the new norm and it’s just too high.
Again Switzerland is competitive but all the latest things are putting some jeopardy into its competitiveness.
There is already talks of raising premiums again and we are in March - like getting us ready slowly so that we don’t complain.
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Totally agree. It’s such a waste. Each have their own website, app, call center, invoice processing, contract writing, legal department, negotiation with hospitals etc etc etc.
Cannot be efficient… Maybe there should be a fixed number of licences and a competitive allocation so as to foster competition but not let it get out of hand as it is now.
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This kind of reasoning is short-sighted. As more and more people qualify for the cap, as costs rise, costs will have to be increased even more, eventually everyone will pay 10% of their income.
That what I meant to say. Let’s keep the insurance model, just make it run by government, as the “competition” just adds markups on the real costs.
In any case, the proposed cap creates a serious financial problem. Could someone explain to me how the insurance companies are going to survive if all the high earners leave them? By law, no insurance company can reject anyone from basic health insurance. Statistically even distribution is not guaranteed. It’s easy to see how some insurances can be left with only low-income customers and go bankrupt.
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Before considering a government/national system, look at Britain’s NHS and shudder.
The uncritisable holy cow that hemorrhages cash on an industrial scale. Great for emergencies, but disasterous for routine ops. Even cancer treatment is slow to get started.
Switzerland needs to get a grip on prices on medical centres. My recent experience is tat the service is too excellent! Tests, scans, treatments are entered into with no thought by the profession other than the insurers will pay…
The insurers still get the same money. The cap would be financed by the federal budget (minimum 2/3 of the cost) and the cantons. It is basically an extension of the existing model.
State hospitals in Switzerland are already run by local government - at a canton level.
It was a general reply, not to something specific you wrote.
Probably plenty!
I think you’re going way out there bringing surgeons into it. They don’t do the same operation on the same patient every month.
However, I should have expanded upon my answer. I struggle to understand why a refill of the same prescription every month should continue to cost me/my insurance an extra 8-ish Francs for some alleged “check”? It’s a refill. They asked me when I first started taking the medication if I knew how it worked and why it was prescribed and whether I have questions. They don’t ask me every time because they know it’s not necessary.
I don’t have a problem with the extra charge for a one-off or first-time prescription. But surely they don’t need an extra amount for every refill for every customer?
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The thing is even though that particular medication is a refill you may have started taking other things in the meantime which may have a potential drug interaction with that one and that’s something the pharmacists can pick up on in those checks.
If you get your meds from your doctor’s practice, do you still pay the medication checks? I get all my meds from my family doctor and I don’t think I pay for the checks anymore.
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In my dreams i wish it wasn’t obligatory, I would have canceled it on the spot and never think about it, i had the worst experience with swiss doctors, absolute money waste and incompetence. And there is no competition among insurances, as was pointed out it is a mafia cartel that all set prices on the market to make sure everyone will get their margins, fat bonuses and what not, there is no accountability on what/why is charged by doctors/hospitals either, everyone “just pays”. Basically it is a system where state/doctors/insurances ALL PROFIT from this milking, and there is ZERO incentive to change anything, we can bitch as much as we like, but nothing will change, all these generations of politicians with their fat salaries also there just to blabla, no one wants to change what is a legal money extraction scheme. Now this initiative about smth 10%, hahhah even better, i think they rub their hands up there, to legally charge 10% of income (eh a “cap” hahahha) well that will bring additional billions to already multi billion asset insurance companies. I could see that a single non-profit organization for the very basic medical coverage is reasonable, all other things then go ahead and choose private additional insurances, or have an option to have deductible 5k, 10k that i pay minimum premium. In a fantasy world one could take those billions that insurances possess now (those eye watering financial reports from them) and use it to cover every year expenses, instead of “capping” what can be charged from us, how about to “cap” profits of these “air sellers” and amount of money they can have on balance sheets.
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Yeah, it looked like a huge logical leap to me too. However…
Not every practice is doing that or at least not for all sort of medicines/treatements.
Highly unnecessary. Docs do make sure they know about your potential other medication.
Not really.
Now you are suggesting that surgeons shouldn’t do some of their work for free but in your opinion, it’s ok if pharmacists do.
The 8 CHF that pharmacists charge people each time they provide a subscription is almost irrelevant in this discussion of the every increasing premiums caused by too much bureaucracy and greed.
Maybe you should read 3Wishes post again?
Why would I want to do that?
I’ve already explained that the 8 CHF surcharge included the paperwork that must be done in recording the administering of the prescription, re-ordering, stock control etc etc (i.e. the pharmacists time).
Then there are the fixed costs of running the pharmacy - rent, lighting, heating, cleaning etc etc.
All these costs are the same whether it is a single prescription or a repeat one.
Not all cantons allow doctors to supply the medicines directly to patients, Neuchâtel doesn’t.
And your blind trust in all the doctors checking for interactions is frightening. Doctors make mistakes, if you see more than one doctor for different things they don’t always know about other medications you’re taking, out of hours visits for an emergency problems don’t have all your medication history etc etc. There are a multitude of reasons as to why a doctor might not have picked up on a potential drug interaction so the pharmacy checks are a good safety net especially if you always use the same pharmacy and they have a dossier for you.
On more than one occasion the pharmacy here has picked up on something not mentioned or noticed by the doctor.
Something simple like taking two medications at least 30 minutes apart for example can make a huge difference to the efficacy of the treatment.
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That means they either failed some parts of their job when prescribing a medicine or you failed to communicate with them. If you have a GP the specialist is sending them directly their recommendations.
But mistakes can happen, I agree. I don’t have a blind trust, least of all frightening. I am saying it is much less likely to happen and the pharmacy shouldn’t probably charge the same fee every single time.
Btw, it puts into a different perspective why the ask you every single time if you know how to take pain killers; however, not one single time do they ask if you take other medicines too and that should be the first thing to ask imho.
So yeah, I wouldn’t have a frightening blind trust in pharmacists either, but that’s just my opinion. I always check the posology and possible interactions myself.
In that case, it’s nothing new. Low-income people already receive subsidies for health insurance. This time they want it to be granted, set in stone that no one’s cost will exceed 10% of income, at the expense of the entire federation (not just the local canton). I don’t see any other result of such changes than an increase of the federal tax.
And that would be the end of Swiss healthcare. Look around, people generally choose healthy lifestyle here, but when they do need to visit the doctor a large portion already hopes across the border as they know it’s unlikely to exceed the franchise so why not paying half for the same treatment.
Unused hospitals, etc, can’t exist without any financing.
I agree that Swiss health care is a mafia. Doctors are privy to your insurance model and milk you with unnecessary visits/inspections if you have not yet exceeded your franchise. Once you reach your franchise limit, they suddenly become efficient. It looks like the GP gets bonus if it make you pay your franchise. Based on experience, I take it that Swiss health insurance is only for emergencies, everything else is better done abroad.
Usually doctors directly deal with the insurer and don’t even know what franchise model the patient has or how much of the franchise has been spent. I know this for a fact as my wife deals with payment administration between doctors and insurers.
Your posts seem utterly uninformed and I would appreciate if you either informed yourself or just stopped posting on topics you have obviously no clue about.
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