title: What Can US Single-Payer Supporters Learn From the Swiss Rejection of Single Payer?
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.
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA claudia.chaufan@ucsf.edu.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chaufan
mesh_terms: D018166:Health Care Reform; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics; D018855:Single-Payer System / Q000458:organization & administration*; D013557:Switzerland; D014481:United States
keywords: affordable health care act; global/international health care systems and policy; political economy of health and health care; politics of health reform in the united states