US Senate Republicans failed Wednesday 2 February in their bid to repeal the healthcare act that was passed in March 2010, as expected, but before the vote the lawmakers passed an amendment to reduce the healthcare plan’s paperwork for companies. The law, a key part of President Obama’s reforms, will provide coverage to 30 million uninsured people in the US, but it still faces hurdles. Two of four state judges who have ruled on it have said it is unconstitutional and the US Department of Justice has said it will fight these rulings, taking it to the Supreme Court if necessary. Iowa is taking its own approach to fighting the bill, with the state lower house passing legislation Wednesday to allow people to opt out of the federal system.
Links to other sites: BBC, Des Moines Register, NPR, Washington Post
Federal Council will consult on plan for how big banks can fail, negotiate withholding tax on foreigners’ accounts
Measles, tougher penal sentences, electricity suppliers, corporate tax rates all on the 2011 schedule
Swiss Federal Council (cabinet): government publishes its 2011 agenda
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Government, fresh from the defeat of its counter-initiative in the vote on foreign convicts 28 November, has set out an ambitious agenda for work it expects to complete in 2011. This will be the final session before a new parliament is elected 23 October 2011.
Two pieces of legislation, one calling for a tougher penal code and the other for greater efforts to integrate foreigners into Swiss society, were planned before the weekend vote, but they must now be coordinated with a constitutional change, the results of the 28 November popular initiative, where Swiss voters chose automatic expulsion of foreign convicts.
Negotiations over undeclared assets in Swiss banks confirmed
The council confirmed Tuesday that negotiations are already underway with some countries, and it intends to open negotiations with other key countries, to “regularize” undeclared assets coming to Swiss banks from outside Switzerland. The main tool Switzerland intends to use is a withholding tax but the government says the negotiations will also include a commitment by the Swiss to “ensure, as far as possible, that undeclared assets from [countries with negotiations] will not in future come to Switzerland”.
Bankruptcy proceedings for key banks would limit pay, free trade agreements get priority
The cabinet will consult with interested parties on the details of how banks that are critical to the national financial system would be allowed to move into bankruptcy if they fail. A particular aspect of this is the decision by the government to limit payment to bankers for any financial institution that comes under the government’s care. Wide consultation on drafts for new laws with major impact is standard procedure in Switzerland and proposed legislation is then revised based on feedback before it goes to parliament.
Trade talks to be accelerated
Swiss unemployment stable in fourth quarter, 2010 outlook brighter
More people working in Swiss healthcare
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Lake Geneva region showed the strongest growth in employment in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 1.1 percent. Zurich was the only other area to show growth, 0,9 percent. Overall, Swiss unemployment remained stable, with a slight slip of 0.3 percent compared to the same period in 2008.
Fourth quarter figures for Swiss unemployment published Thursday morning 25 February show with significant differences between industry, where the number of jobless continues to rise, and the services sector, where the jobless rate is falling. The outlook for 2010 appears to be brighter, according to Federal Statistical Office forecasts, with an increase in the number of jobs available. For the first time in five quarters, industry looks set to increase the number of jobs open, after seasonal worker adjustments to the figures.
The number of people actively working rose by 0.3 percent in 2009, thanks to women, whose presence in the workforce increased by 0.8 percent, while the number of men working fell by 0.1 percent.
US President Barack Obama said in his first State of the Union address, the annual presidential speech, that a top priority now is to see more jobs created, insisting that he wants to see a jobs bill from Congress soon. He also made it clear that his liberal agenda remains firmly in place, led by the drive for healthcare reform and climate-change legislation.
Links to other sites: BBC, The Globe & Mail, Canada, New York Times, NPR
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Basel-based healthcare products Novartis has agreed to buy out the majority shareholding in Alcon, eyecare specialists, from Vevey-based Nestlé, for CHF28.1 billion. Novartis paid $10.4 in 2008 for a 25 percent share and it has offered to buy the remaining 23 percent share for an additional $11.2b, bringing the total price for the company to CHF49.7b. The news was greeted with enthusiasm by markets, reports the Financial Times, with a 0.4 percent jump in the FTSE at opening Monday, normally a dismal post-holiday trading session.
Business Week reports that the sale leaves Nestlé in good shape for a major acquisition.
Exports, port of Basel
Update 11:40 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland officially moved out of recession in the third quarter of 2009, Bern announced Tuesday 1 December. Real GDP (gross domestic product) was up 0.3 percent compared to the previous quarter. Private consumption (+0.6 percent) and building investments both grew, and healthcare plus the financial and insurance industries also rose. Investments were up “massively”, with industrial goods investments rising by 5.5 percent.
The government’s own “consumption expenditure” rose by 1.3 percent.
Exports of goods and services both climbed, by 2.2 and 0.3 percent respectively, for the first time “after a considerable one-year slide” the government statement reports.
US President Barack Obama’s tour of Asia ends in Beijing today, 17 November, on an upbeat note as he and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced together that they have had positive, frank talks and that they should work more closelyto improve international cooperation. Their statements could mark a turning point, at least in terms of dialogue, which has often been negative on both sides, for several years, but Western observers are skeptical that the talks will lead to substantive changes, and the Wall Street Journal points out that this visit was the most tightly controlled of the three most recent US presidential visits. Hu and Obama say they have reached a consensus on many issues, notably the need to avoid protectionism and further global financial crises. Future cooperation will include healthcare research, especially stem cell and pandemics research. Obama invited Hu to visit the US in 2010 and Hu accepted.
US media coverage of the meeting has been muted, although the meeting made European headlines: NPR barely mentions it, the Washington Post‘s front page made it a secondary headline, while Sarah Palin, who ran for vice president in the November 2008 elections, grabs a larger space with the headline “Is there anything we don’t already know about Sarah Palin?”
Links to other sites: AP/Yahoo, BBC, New York Times, Xinhua (joint statement), Wall Street Journal
Swiss food and drink cost you a little more in September 2009.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s inflation rate fell slightly in September, down 0.9 percent, to an annual rate of 2.9 percent. The Consumer Price Index remained stable but the overall CPI is the result of a balance between imports,which have gone down in price and Swiss-made goods and services, which have risen slightly. It also hides differences that include falling prices for housing, energy and transport but rising prices for teaching, communications, food and drink, healthcare.
US President Barack Obama told the US Wednesday that the time for bickering over healthcare reform is over, as he stepped directly into the fight after weeks of leaving it mainly to Congress, to push for his plan for a non-profit public insurance plan. His appearance on prime time television was aimed primarily at the American middle class, says NPR, and he took pains to reassure those who like their insurance plans that these would not be affected. The speech comes as his public ratings have been sliding. BBC, Fox News, The Globe & Mail, Canada, Huffington Post
Obama has faced harsh critics over healthcare reform, but another battle has been grabbing public attention, over US troops in Afghanistan. Growing public resistance to building troops, which Obama’s advisors have been warning him about, came into the limelight with the publication by Associated Press of photos of a dying soldier, despite the family’s wish for them to remain private. Guardian, UK, MSNBC
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.
US President Barack Obama focused in his weekly national address on what he labeled “misinformation” being spread as a dubious way of fighting his efforts to reform the healthcare system. “Let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, cut Medicaid or bring about a government takeover of health care. That’s simply not true. This isn’t about putting government in charge of your health insurance; it’s about putting you in charge of your health insurance.” (NPR) Former Republican office holders Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin referred to the plan in public attacks on it, with Gingrich saying it could lead to euthanasia and Palin calling it evil. CS Monitor
In an extraordinary side story, National Public Radio‘s Howard Berkes writes about the soberign experience of joining a two-day free clinic in Virginia in July, where for “two-and-a-half days, about 800 doctors, nurses, dentists and optometrists treated 2,700 uninsured and underinsured people, most from Appalachia. No one was asked for an insurance card. There were no co-pays. And there were no bills.”
US President Barack Obama addressed the US public in a key television broadcast, to insist that a reform of the healthcare system must make it through Congress by the end of 2009. “We will pass reform that lowers cost, promotes choice and provides coverage that every American can count on,” he said, noting that he would hear out all proposals except for funding it through a tax on middle class Americans. Obama argued that the reform must lower, not increase, the US deficit, and that it is at the centre of economic recovery. BBC, NPR
The US House of Representatives is including in its proposed healthcare package a 5.4 percent surtax on income for anyone earning more than $1 million, according to Reuters. An earlier figure for a possible surtax was 3 percent. The House presented its 1,000-page bill Tuesday 14 July and is pushing to get it passed by August. The bill was written after months of negotiations with the Obama administration. A US Senate bill to reform the healthcare system is moving more slowly. Once passed, the two houses will work on a compromise package. CBS News
US President Barack Obama told the annual meetings of the American Medical Association in New York 15 June that if the US healthcare system is not reformed to provide broader coverage but also to contain costs, the growing cost of medical care could bankrupt the country. Some 50 million Americans are currently without health insurance. A proposal by the president that would cost an estimated $1 trillion and taken 10 years to fully implement, is the subject of growing debate. BBC, New York Times and Bloomberg TV
The United Nations Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Vodafone are joining forces to create mHealth Alliance, a project designed to encourage “innovation and maximum impact” with mobile phones to improve health care delivery, particularly in developing countries. Sixty-four percent of the world’s four billion cell phone users are in emerging economies, according to the UN Foundation press release on the project, and cell phones are targeted for several health care initiatives: the new alliance is designed to act as a complementary umbrella organization.
Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Reports that paying for a private room for non-urgent surgery reduces the waiting time before the operation is scheduled appear to be unfounded.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss federal government and cantons have agreed to continue covering the bulk of the cost of vaccinations to protect against cervical cancer for teenage girls, despite the relatively high cost of the HPV vaccine, reports RSR (Fre). Read more…
Bern, Switzerland (romandie/ats, Fre) – The cost of hearing aids, currently CHF1,500 to several thousand francs, will go down in Switzerland, with the federal social security office announcing that it will accept bids from companies outside the country to push down costs. Read more…
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government presented the first six months of the reformed AI (Assurance Invalidité) disability insurance system, which appeared to be working relatively well. Read more…
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – In two weeks the Swiss government will announce approved health care premiums for 2009, which are likely to rise by 2.5 to 3.5%, but the health insurance companies’ association, Santésuisse, says premiums must increase more rapidly. Read more…
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss Federal Council Wednesday announced that it will push for a two-step reform of the AI (Assurance Invalidité), Switzerland’s disability insurance programme. The financially ailing system will need a short-term plan that can be implemented very quickly, with other measures to be planned and approved by the end of 2010. Read more…
