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. Singapore’s public spending on health care as a fraction of GDP is 86 percent lower than America’s. That’s 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 ...
Statism (eg universal healthcare) and conservatism are mutually incompatible.
There is not conservative case for government control of our lives. Period!
For a fraction of the population, too. Funny how that works.
And that right there shows there is NO conservative case. There is NO liberty or self-determination if the gubment dictates what I must buy. How did we end up with so damn many progs in the party?
Too many pragmatists and not enough ideologues.
Yeah, but Switzerland doesn’t have people running all through their borders and becoming a citizen is difficult, like Japan.
They also don’t advertise free gubmint cheese for non-citizens outside their borders.
This is all predicated on a mound of Horse $hit. This idiot forgets that Singapore and Switzerland are homogenous societies with fewer residents than most bus stops. Hardly a thing he says is convertible to a continental hegemony of 300+ millions.
Besides he is a Manhattan Institute Leftist so he can be dismissed out of hand.
The government doesn’t subsidize anything. We, the taxpayers, do. Once again, I would be required to not only pay for my own health care but a bunch of other peoples. I’m tired of paying for other peoples free stuff.
Not only do Switzerland and Singapore have only a fraction of our population, they don’t have millions of illegal aliens draining the budget (federal and state/local), along with the crime they bring.
Also their combined defense budgets are, as we say in Yiddish, only “bupkis” (chump change, pennies) as compared to that of the US and OUR WORLDWIDE RESPONSIBLITIES.
You just cannot compare the US to these pipsqueak countries regarding healthcare policies or much of any other national policies.
If it weren’t for the US, there would be no Switzerland or Singapore. Maybe a Swissdeutchland and a Peoples Republic of Singapore instead.
It is like the French people who complain that US visitors don’t speak French (I do, un peu), to which we reply. “Maybe, but thanks to us, you still do”.
There is a difference.
There is NO conservative argument for it
I’m going to guess that a smaller percentage of their populations are on the taxpayer dole than the USA.
Switzerland, home to new world order’s Bank of International Settlements.
Exactly. Unless I have the freedom to obtain or decline coverage, to pay cash or do without medical treatment, then I am not free. Secondly, despite the execrable John Roberts, the Constitution gives no auhtority whatsoever to the Federal government to interfere with my private medical choices.
Precisely. Whenever someone touts a “conservative case” for a leftist cause, that someone is himself a liberal, often trying to pass himself off as “conservative”.
Lost me at the word mandate
Sure there is — if you take conservative
to mean keeping things the same.
The government wants to keep off the constraints of the Constitution that it's thrown off.
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