Well being will not be a commodity – The unsaid of the economic system

The vertiginous improve in medical insurance premiums in Switzerland for subsequent 12 months has induced lots of ink to circulate in latest weeks, and for good motive. It’s worrying for many individuals belonging to the center and decrease lessons, given the already appreciable improve in client costs brought on by a collection of various components, such because the Covid-19 pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine and the vitality disaster. ensuing from it, with out ignoring hypothesis on the monetary markets.

If this upward development in medical insurance premiums have been to proceed, the nationwide economic system would undergo considerably as a result of continuous discount within the buying capability of households. The answer to this downside lies within the involvement of all of the stakeholders, every of them having their very own position to play with a purpose to fulfill the overall curiosity.

The primary class of actors is that of well being insurers, which should watch out for paying extreme quantities to their very own managers, provided that these quantities are financed, within the last evaluation, by the premiums paid by the folks insured with them. . If the salaries and bonuses of those leaders have been to be diminished, and this with a purpose to respect the factors of meritocracy, a superb variety of insured individuals of those medical insurance funds would receive a exceptional discount of their month-to-month premiums. The retail commerce in addition to the small or medium-sized enterprises that promote their merchandise within the nationwide economic system would additionally profit, due to the rise within the buying energy of those shoppers.

The second class of actors that should contribute to the discount of medical insurance premiums covers hospitals and personal clinics, which should keep away from pointless therapies and medical examinations for sufferers, placing the well being of those earlier than the necessity for repay their tools and infrastructure by way of over-medicalization. The well being of sufferers can’t proceed to be thought-about as a commodity enabling the earnings of those establishments to be maximized, the target of which can’t be to pay dividends to their shareholders however quite to deal with sick folks in addition to attainable.

The third class of gamers involved is that of the pharmaceutical firms, that are anticipated to not exploit the well being system to make extravagant earnings by fixing the promoting costs of medicines that are clearly exaggerated in relation to to the expenditure incurred for the analysis and improvement of those, a fortiori after they profit from public subsidies financed by taxpayers (as within the case of vaccines towards Covid-19).

It’s also obligatory for the State to vary its tune, if solely by way of a tax coverage encouraging all stakeholders to behave in a virtuous method to fulfill the overall curiosity. It might thus be attainable to place in place optimistic incentives, which means a discount in taxation, for financial topics who keep away from over-medicalization or who cut back the extravagant salaries of the managers of hospitals and different personal clinics. It might then be official to extend taxation for financial actors within the well being system whose conduct is visibly going within the different route, particularly, who exaggerate with medical therapies or when remunerating the managers involved.

Past the conduct of all the topics talked about above and to which we should add the insured themselves, who’re required to not go unnecessarily to the physician, a sure variety of structural reforms are obligatory. For instance, premiums paid for medical insurance mustn’t exceed a sure proportion (say, 10%) of the insured particular person’s disposable revenue. Furthermore, the financing of medical insurance needs to be based mostly on a system much like that of the AVS, insofar because the premium paid is proportional to the accessible revenue of the insured particular person, as an alternative of being the identical for any class of individuals, be they higher, center or decrease class. This is able to permit the people of the latter to now not be compelled to attraction to the subsidies paid by the Cantons, financed by the taxpayers and that are briefly solely a bandage on a wound which continues to bleed…