International Journal of Health Services
2016, Vol. 46(2) 331–345
What Can US Single-Payer Supporters Learn From the Swiss Rejection of Single Payer?
By Claudia Chaufan
Abstract
On September 27, 2014, Swiss voters rejected a proposal to replace their system of about 60 health insurance companies offering mandatory basic health coverage with a single public insurer, the state, which would offer taxpayer-funded coverage of all medically necessary care. The Swiss and the U.S. media, academia, and business sectors, from conservative and liberal camps, interpreted the results to mean a rejection of single payer and a preference for a privately run system, with important implications for health reform in the United States. While on the surface mainstream interpretations appear reasonable, I argue that they have little basis on fact because they rely on assumptions that, while untrue, are repeated as mantras that conveniently justify the continuation of a model of health insurance that is unraveling, less conspicuously in Switzerland, dramatically in the United States. To make my case, I describe the dominant narrative about Swiss health care and mainstream interpretations of the latest referendum on health reform, unpack the problem within these interpretations, and conclude by identifying what lessons the Swiss referendum contains for single payer advocates in the United States in particular and for those who struggle for social and economic rights more generally.
Lessons to be Learned
Why, then, was single payer defeated? What, if anything, can single payer supporters learn from this defeat? First, we must grant that the state of Swiss health care may be of concern for the Swiss (who seem to have lower tolerance for being deprived of health care than Americans), but is still not bad enough. People w ho experience the greatest barriers to care, in Switzerland as elsewhere, are the most politically disenfranchised—young, poor, women, and immigrants, much like they are in the United States—so the problem has yet to strike the so- called middle classes badly enough.
Yet the Swiss case can help single payer supporters, and other social justice advocates, experience and gauge the extraordinary power of propaganda of the corporate class, in health care matters as in others. The scare tactics against single payer displayed by corporate interests in Switzerland have been extraordinary, in both 2007 and this latest referendum. As the BBC timidly suggested, one reason for the failure "may be the power of the insurance sector and of the big pharmaceutical companies in Switzerland [...] Both have strong lobby groups." And yet, none of the single payer or other relevant referenda indicate that love of private health insurance is increasing. If anything, they la y bare the reality that even in the land of direct democracy, as in Switzerland, the attempt to achieve health care justice through a system of "competing private insurers" is a delusion. They also indicate that more political education is necessary to achieve single payer. This, I believe, is as true for the Swiss as it is for the American people.
The Swiss referendum also teaches activists that corporate propaganda is vicious not only when it comes to portraying the presumed evils of single payer or beauty of private health insurance. It is also vicious when it comes to interpreting, and communicating to the public, voting patterns and preferences in health care matters.
The power of corporate propaganda matters because its self-serving interpretation can operate like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The narrative that "the people" prefer the status quo, and the dubious assumption that the people's will is the key driver of policy, especially in America, can lead public health care advocates to conclude that those who struggle for greater social justice are more alone than they really are, rather than interpreting the resilience of current power structures as indicating that the corporate class owns, and controls, the means of communication as much or more than it owns and controls the means of production, and is thus able to shape the public debate to suit their interests. As a result of this, advocates may give up the fight too soon, or worse, retreat and accommodate to the boundaries of change as set by this corporate class.
In concluding, I propose that the Swiss referendum teaches us that: 1) We need to sharpen our analytic tools, i.e., to improve our understanding of what the ACA is really about, what the real challenges (and enemies!) are, and what our alternatives could and should be; 2) We must increase our outreach to those sectors of society who do not have a voice, or whose voices are suppressed, or who do not think that their voices make a difference; and finally 3) We must work on improving the political education of those we wish to reach, rather than investing in "improving the message" (as many political "experts" recommend). This is usually a message of sound bites without substance which more often than not leads to attempts to fit social change within the boundaries of the "politically feasible" as defined by that same corporate class.
As Americans celebrate this year the 50th anniversary of Medicare, and many, even insured, continue to forgo needed care, they are being told that "Medicare was enacted in a very different environment than we live today" and that some privatization is inevitable and even desirable. However, the results of the Swiss referendum teach us that we need more, not less — nor more accommodating — struggle for single payer and health care justice, in the words, albeit not in t he spirit, of Milton Friedman, until the "politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."*
* "Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."
— Milton Friedman
Claudia Chaufan, MD, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of California San Francisco and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program.
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Quote of the Day
October 24, 2011
OECD/WHO report on the Swiss health system
Comment by Don McCanne, MD
"It is not clear why so many in the U.S. are enamored of the Swiss health insurance system when this OECD/WHO report confirms that it is highly inefficient and fragmented, with profound administrative waste, inequitably funded, with regressive financing and with wide variations in premiums, has the highest out-of-pocket costs, has an increasing prevalence of managed care intrusions, and is controlled by a private insurance industry that has learned how to game risk selection at significant cost to those on the losing end."
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Comment by Don McCanne
At a time of renewed interest in single payer reform in the United States, it might be helpful to look again at why the voters of Switzerland rejected single payer reform in September, 2014. Although their financing system is superior to ours, it does have several serious deficiencies that would be addressed by converting to a single payer system. In this article, Claudia Chaufan discusses lessons that we can learn from the Swiss that may help us in our advocacy for reform.
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