Reply to for those who want to reduce government services

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "for those who want to reduce government services - what country is your model?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]One could look at Singapore or Switzerland, but they are very small countries.[/quote]

I don't know about Singapore, but why would you look at Switzerland to support reduced government services? They have a much strong social safety net than the U.S., and spend a lot more of their GDP on it than the U.S. does.[/quote]

Obamacare is very similar to the Swiss model of healthcare. There is no single-payer healthcare in Switzerland and voters recently struck down a referendum on having national single-payer coverage.

However, in the US we did not adopt the part of the Swiss model that allow it to work effectively (price controls):

[quote][i]Like Obamacare, Santésuisse mandates that all citizens purchase insurance from private insurance companies; establishes by law a minimum package of acceptable benefits to satisfy that mandate; subsidizes health-insurance premiums for lower-income people, with a goal of keeping their insurance premiums to less than 10 percent of their incomes; mandates coverage of preexisting conditions and imposes “community rating,” which means that low-risk insurance buyers pay higher premiums to allow for high-risk buyers to pay lower premiums, though the Swiss do make some adjustments for age and sex (!); it imposes controls on procedure costs and reimbursement for providers.

The Swiss model also does a few things that ACA does not: It requires that insurance companies offer their minimal policies on a nonprofit basis; it is structured around relatively high out-of-pocket expenses (high copays and deductibles) in order to encourage consumers to spend soberly; and, perhaps most important, it does this in the context of a health-insurance market that is entirely individual: There are no employer-based health-insurance plans in Switzerland. Everybody buys his own health insurance, the same way people buy everything from tacos to mobile-phone service. Swiss regulations also mandate that prices be made public, which helps consumer markets to function.[/i][/quote]

https://fee.org/articles/why-the-swiss-health-care-model-will-never-work-in-america/

As I mentioned in my previous post about trash bags, the U.S. seems to have an enforcement issue when it comes to its laws. We don't like to establish meaningful penalties for middle and upper-class citizens; they feel that it is OK to blatantly violate rules and laws. Whereas the Swiss government really does go after people who break norms. The Swiss government will garnish your wages if you don't buy a healthcare plan, there is no token penalty. Eventually, they will force a plan upon you.

Americans prefer that our government not be so heavy-handed. Yet, at the end of the day, your decision to not purchase health insurance ends up costing me more money in the way of higher premiums.

America's biggest problem is that we have lawlessness masquerading as "freedom;" and we have people/companies wanting to impose the costs of externalities on others. I don't know how to solve this issue, as it seems to be a central part of our national and cultural DNA. Donald Trump is the perfect embodiment of this elite entitlement.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics