The initiative to establish a single health insurance fund is opposed by many physicians, but is currently meeting with no small amount of support among the population. The latter is annoyed by the health insurers’ advertising and the allegedly high incomes of health insurance managers – arguments that catch on at first glance.
However, this in no way solves the problem of high and rising premiums, because 95 centimes of every premium franc are used for diagnostics and therapy. Only 5 % of the premiums cost the employees and the administration of the health insurance companies – this remains the case even in a unified health insurance system.
As Urs Stoffel, president of the Zurich Medical Association, explained, rising premiums are caused, among many other reasons, by demographics – we are all getting older and sicker as we age – multiple illnesses and medical advances, such as more precise methods of diagnosis, newer equipment and medications. All developments that neither the patients nor their relatives would like to miss. After all, the conventional wisdom is that we pay premiums throughout our lives and are entitled to the best possible treatment in the event of illness.
At the invitation of the “Puure-Huus”, a group of physicians committed to professional politics(www.puure-huus.ch), National Councilor Jacqueline Fehr, a staunch supporter of a single health insurance fund, and Walter Grete, past-president of the Zurich Medical Association, an opponent, crossed blades on October 22 in front of a packed audience in the hall of the Doktorhaus in Wallisellen, in a highly civilized manner and without injury, under critical and provocative questioning by health economist Willy Oggier. The audience was clearly opposed to a unified health insurance system. It cost more instead of less, risked damaging the best of all health care systems, and gave bureaucrats even more leverage. And that the services provided by the health insurance funds and efficient financial management are at risk because competition no longer works.
The fact that Ms. Fehr, in the lion’s den, so to speak, has defended her position combatively, wittily, with wit, charm and the best dossier knowledge is to her credit.
The medical profession and health insurers – according to one of the conclusions – still have a lot of convincing to do to prevent the sword of Damocles of the single health insurance fund from falling on an insufficiently informed population.
Cordially, your
