Lowell Brown over at Truth North News & Commentary takes a look at Switzerland’s health care system and likes a lot of what he sees. Here are the bullet points of his analysis of the Swiss system.

1. There is an insurance mandate for all individuals.

2. The government defines a what the insurance benefit will be for all standard health insurers.

3. Insurance companies are not allowed to deny coverage to any individual.

4. Health insurance and medical procedure prices are made publicly available.

5. In exchange for providing health insurance to consumers, insurance companies receive premiums from consumers and risk-adjustment payments from the government in order that insurance companies are not punished if they decide to insure a sicker population.

6. Premiums are community rated, meaning that sick and healthy individuals pay the same price within each age group {…}

7. Individuals are allowed to purchase supplemental insurance as well (there is no regulated benefit for supplemental insurance).

8. There is significant cost sharing in all insurance plans (i.e.: deductibles, 10% coinsurance rates up to an annual ceiling).

9. Open enrollment occurs twice per year (June and December).

Could something like this work here for US? Lowell comments:

A Swiss model for the USA might even be great for us. No, it doesn’t follow free market principles strictly, but that’s not possible with healthcare — or, at least, in the USA we’ve made a decision as a society that we will not let the market alone decide whether people get medical care. {…} Switzerland has made the same decision, but has insisted on competiton among insurance companies, individual involvement in choosing insurance, and transparency of cost — all core free-market principles.

And “core free-market principles” are what’s missing from the Obama/Democrat’s plan. Speaking of the Congressional Demwits, now we’ve got Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, claiming that it’s too difficult to put the full text of the health care bill online for the other Congressfolks, let alone any of us that might be interested, to read.

If that sounds like the Senate Dems in the Finance Committee are hiding something, well —

If it looks like BS and smells like BS . . . it’s BS!

They’re hiding a lot of somethings. Call and write that load of blithering idiots whose salaries you are paying and tell them to READ THE BILL!

We’ve got lots of time and if there are going to be changes in the delivery of health care in America — we had better get this one right.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 9:50 am and is filed under Health Care Wars, Obamacare Nightmares. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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