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Health care debate (cartoon: © 2009 Patrick Chappatte)

New York, USA (GenevaLunch) – Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times (registration required) 17 August says of President Barack Obama’s proposed health plan that “it most resembles the system in Switzerland.” More pointedly, he says that unlike what many, including Fox News, would like the public to believe, the plan will not turn the US into a Soviet Union or a distorted version of Britain, but rather: “the truth is that the plans on the table would, roughly speaking, turn America into Switzerland – which may be occupied by lederhosen-wearing holey-cheese eaters, but wasn’t a socialist hellhole the last time I looked.”

Obamacare, he says, “is a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage.”

Krugman has pointed to this similarity several times recently, prompting debate over how well the US could adopt the Swiss mandatory and well-regulated but largely private system, but facts about the Swiss system are few on the ground in the US debate.

National Public Radio in July 2008 ran a series of articles on health care systems in other countries, including two on Switzerland (Ed. note: GL editor Ellen Wallace and her family were interviewed about Swiss health care for disabled people).

Hobbled health systems

The Swiss spent 10.8 percent of GDP on health care in 2007, the last year for which figures are available (a higher figure of 11.1 percent is often used, from earlier data), making it the third country after the US and France; it also ranks third for per capita health spending, after the US and Norway. Source: OECD survey of UK health costs, compared to other OECD countries, 2009 (pdf)

Rising health care costs in Switzerland continue to be a concern and cause for regular public debate. A study by Santésuisse, the health insurers’ representative body, commissioned by the federal government and published in 2007, shows that costs are likely to rise by 2.2 to 2.4 times by 2030, compared to 2004, without taking into account the nature of funding – private, public or mixed.

Related:

• Sante Suisse report for federal government on health care spending to 2030 (pdf)
• OECD and WHO’s survey of Switzerland’s health system, 19.10.2006
• Krugman’s syndicated column 3 August in St Paul Pioneer Press and Seattle Times
• Democratic Underground 2007