America is too selfish for Swiss health care
I’ve just returned from three weeks away from the USA. I was visiting Switzerland as I do frequently. Though still wading through the fog of jet lag, I see that Switzerland and its excellent and accessible health care system is being bandied about as a role model for what universal, comprehensive, private, health insurance coverage could look like here in America. Guess what? The Swiss health care system would never fly here.
There are a couple of reasons. The first reason Swiss health care couldn’t work here? It’s because we don’t care enough about each other here in the US of A.
Let me give you an example that encapsulates my point. NPR chronicles the story of Ellen Wallace, Nick Bates and their 16-year-old autistic daughter, Tara in a segment entitled “In Switzerland, An Easier Path for the Disabled.” As a Swiss citizen, once Tara was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3, she became entitled to federal disability insurance coverage which covers all of her medical and educational costs and also “pays for a cleaning lady and household help for the family, since Tara leaves a perpetual mess in her wake, and even for the disposable diapers Tara still needs.”
But here’s the kicker. Ellen Wallace became concerned about what would become of Tara after Wallace and her husband passed on. Here is what Tara’s social worker made plain to Wallace:
“She said the really key thing to understand is, you don’t have to worry,” Wallace recalls. “The way the Swiss government approaches this is that every person who is a Swiss citizen has the right to be able to live decently.
“For me, that was just like such a huge wave of relief — to have somebody tell you, you don’t ever have to worry about how your child is going to be cared for.”
Here in America, there are a whole lot of people who call that kind of sentiment “socialism,” and increasingly, “Nazism.” If you don’t earn it baby, don’t look my way for help. Except of course if you’re a bank, or a wealthy, powerful individual or enterprise with “access.” Heck, just yesterday I heard someone complaining about SChip, you know the program that insures poor children?
The second reason that America could not recreate Swiss style health care is because we do not like nor do we trust our federal government.
The core reason that Switzerland has universal coverage, a “Cadillac” health care standard, and a competitive private health insurance environment is because Swiss people decided to demand that the Swiss government heavily regulate the health insurance industry and decided to pay more taxes so that the government would provide subsidies to those who could not otherwise afford to purchase a Swiss health insurance plan on their own. In Switzerland, there are basic coverage components, very good by American standards, that all plans must include. Then, if you can afford it and if you choose to, one may purchase supplemental policies that cover things like a private hospital room (the basic plan is 4 to a room) and complementary/alternative medicine.
Can you imagine what would happen if the Obama administration even hinted that a general tax increase would be necessary for universal coverage? Can you imagine how many hundreds of millions of dollars the US health insurance industry would be prepared to spend to fend off federal regulation? Just think of it.
