Switzerland's Healthcare Explained!

Switzerland it's a gorgeous Alpine nation of 8 million people it's a parliamentary republic made up of 26 Canton's I've never been but I hear great things about it the country should feel free to fly us over there so we can learn even more but what I do know about its health care system I'll be telling you today here on healthcare triage like pretty much every health care system we've discussed except the United States Switzerland has universal coverage since 1996 the federal health insurance Act has mandated that all residents by statutory health insurance or Shi from private insurance companies everyone and I mean everyone is insured if you move to Switzerland you have three months to buy a policy and it's retroactive to your arrival the country even works to cover undocumented immigrants shì is offered by competing nonprofit insurance companies in 2013 the average premium for a policy with a 300 Swiss franc deductible for an adult range from three thousand five hundred ninety one Swiss francs to 6070 premiums can vary by geographic region and age there are three groups children up to 19 young adults 19 to 25 and adults over 25 premiums can also vary by acceptance of a managed care scheme in 2011 more than half of the Swiss chose basic coverage with a managed care ensure coverage like in most of the countries we've discussed is comprehensive you get physician services drugs medical devices home health care and preventive services like screening immunizations and exams unlike some countries dental care is not covered i glasses and contact lenses are only covered for children insurance is not coupled to employment individuals by policies and separate ones for their dependents there's also voluntary health insurance or vhi which covers stuff not in the basic plans this can include a better choice of hospitals or doctors or improved amenities Switzerland has a fairly high level of cost-sharing all plans have to have a minimum yes minimum deductible of 300 Swiss francs or about 325 dollars for adults you can get a plan with a higher deductible to a maximum of 25 hundred francs which comes with the lower premium plans generally come with ten percent coinsurance above the deductible for most services 20% charge for most brand-name drugs and a 15 franc copay each day you're in a hospital prices are set by Shi and doctors can't charge more maternity and preventive care are exempt from all co-pays as are children who are in the hospital there's a maximum on all out-of-pocket spending of about 700 francs for adults and 350 francs for kids those at the low end of the socio-economic spectrum get the same private insurance as everyone else they just get help buying it subsidies are given to the poor on a sliding scale about 29% of people get such subsidies to help them buy insurance public hospitals are partially paid for by Canton level governments with insurers paying for the rest private hospitals are paid for more by insurers with minimal public money coming from Canton's for services that public hospitals can't provide government also subsidizes many other types of outpatient care but to a lesser extent than hospitals in 2011 public funding covered about 65% of all healthcare spending the rest is private much of it is from vhi which unlike shì can be for-profit often these can come from different branches of the same insurance company a non-profit side for Shi and a for-profit side for VHI now it's technically illegal for vhi rates and decisions to be based on information known through Shi but it's reportedly hard to enforce this so people can get screwed a bit but 9% of healthcare spending is for vhi another 20% of spending though is for out-of-pocket payments that's very high as countries go almost two to three times what some other countries are paying the Swiss don't have to have a primary care doctor and have a lot of choice unless they're part of certain managed care plans in 2012 39% of doctors were primary care physicians about 60% of them are still in solo practices if they're not part of a managed care plan the Swiss have wide access to specialists much care is still paid for on a fee-for-service basis recognizing that much of life takes place after work hours the Swiss actually focus on after-hours care which is managed by doctors association this is unlike a lot of other countries the Swiss system is somewhat decentralized Canton's and not the federal government are mostly in charge of health care system decisions they are coordinated by the Swiss conference on the cantonal ministers of Public Health quality is mostly maintained through professional self-regulation some quality initiatives have been begun but almost all at a local or provider level costs in Switzerland are considered high of course this is because they're only beat by the US Netherlands France Germany in Canada with respect to health care spending as a percentage of GDP so take expensive with a grain of salt the Swiss are attempting to control costs with some regulated competition among the Shi insurance providers however this hasn't been working out so well many think the system isn't equalizing risk enough so some insurers are getting screwed by having to cover a much sicker population others think that the ways in which hospitals are funded and insurers are compelled to contract with all providers adds to costs in 2012 risk equalization was improved this year incentives were also modified to increase efficiency managed care may also help cost control in the future drugs have to be evaluated for effectiveness and cost before they're covered older drugs are reassessed as well so what do people not like about the Swiss healthcare system there's a huge amount of out-of-pocket spending more than even the United States in fact it's pretty much the highest in the world there's no tax breaks for health insurance so premiums are completely on the individual that 20% copay for drugs can be pretty stiff too there's also no special program for the elderly some doctors complain that they feel pressured to keep costs down if they're prescribing too many drugs are doing too many procedures they can be investigated by insurance companies and if they can't justify what they've done to the satisfaction of insurers they can be forced to pay back some of the costs themselves but while physicians might not like the oversight there's much less bureaucracy on the patient side and lots of Swiss like that there are plenty of physicians with 3.8 per 1000 people compared to an OECD average of 3.1 unlike some countries scanning technology is common wait times are short in fact in a study of 11 OECD nations Switzerland was the second of the best to see specialist and third best to have elective surgery access there is amazing life expectancy at birth is eighty-two point six which is pretty much the highest in the world infant mortality at three point eight per 1000 beats the OECD average of four point three as well their obesity rate is eight point one percent that's unreal these days overall in many quality metrics what's the one ranks among the best in fact it has a legitimate claim to being one of the best health care systems in the world in terms of quality it costs more but the Swiss seem to think it's worth it

Channel: Healthcare Triage

Views: 178,871

Rating: 4.9087343 out of 5

Keywords: switzerland, health, medicine, health care, insurance, universal coverage, premiums, deductible, health insurance, doctor, patient, inpatient, outpatient, hospital, specialist, Therapy

Id: aMG1D4Z-4oY

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 11 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/cchase]

This is great. I'm moving there in January, and I've been looking for a good explanation of how it works there.