24 hours: letters to readers dated October 4, 2024

Sickness premiums

Concerns the article “Should old age be excluded from basic insurance?» (“24 hours” of September 30).

How far will the “solutions” of the Latin Conference of Health Affairs (CLAS) allow us to go too far? Like every year at the same time, the increase in costs of the poorly named “health system” is coupled with that of premiums. The CLAS met to come up with their latest recipes likely to contain an increase in costs that is all the more untenable as it takes place in the context of a general decline in purchasing power.

How far will we sink before the real and courageous question is asked which results from a system that has become a business almost entirely devoted to this inexhaustible source of profits that illness represents? It is to this perverted relationship between disease and profit that we essentially owe this deadly evolution.

Focusing on maintaining health represents an infinitely less lucrative approach. This is all the more true since, although the Swiss can count on extraordinary accessibility and availability to expensive medical technologies, this characteristic is not accompanied by an increase in life expectancy in good health. This fact suggests that the performance of our system responds more to its capacity to offer services to people whose health can be improved rather than to maintaining good health throughout life!

This lack of efficiency seems to confirm a more severe observation: as long as a reflection on the links of economic interests and the collusion between private health insurance, the biotechnopharmacological industry, the actors of the system and the politicians is not started. and measures are not taken to stem overconsumption, there is little chance that the political authorities will defend the interests of the population as a priority. This observation raises a more fundamental question: to which constituents do our agents respond?

D^r Philippe Saegesser, Saint-Légier

“We’re fed up, fed up!”: this is what the Swiss middle class, families and retirees are saying in their hearts. As for the wealthy, they say nothing, about nothing.

We’re tired of being crushed, of being pushed deeper and deeper, of being taken for cash cows from all sides. For retirees, we are constantly too many, we are too old, etc., etc. Now the good news has arrived: “massive increase in insurance premiums for the middle class. So what are all these people doing, in their offices, to try to facilitate the well-being of all the Swiss people, not just those who have no problems? Answer: nothing in any case for health insurance premiums. The bonus problem is not only complicated, it is becoming impossible.

Marianne Dougoud, Froideville

Clearly, the refrain remains unchanged every fall. The same arguments invariably come up… So: how should we ensure that this LAMal is reviewed in depth? That the insurance reserves are known, as well as their use? Let the little transparency be forgotten? That national and state advisors, who sit on the Health Commission, are banned from serving in insurance companies? Should this competition between funds be abandoned? Should the insurance premium be the same in all cantons?

Will we have to wait several more years before going to show our fed up in the streets? What if a significant number of policyholders deposited their insurance premium with a bank, as can be done for rent? Perhaps the Federal Council and Parliament would finally move and quickly impose profound changes on each partner concerned.

It is really time for policyholders/care consumers to show that they have the power to change this system which can no longer continue as is! Wouldn’t the single fund be the solution?

Josette Uffer, Lausanne

As usual we wonder about increases in health costs and keep coming back to the same observations, so let’s act! These are avenues that our authorities should explore with greater will and firmness: medicines that are too expensive in Switzerland; medical accessories that are too expensive (when we know that a prosthetic lens for cataracts costs 900 francs, fully paid by the patient); too many medications given to elderly people in institutions and hospitals; exorbitantly priced scanners and other devices; lack of communication in the different hospital departments, resulting in duplicate analyses.

In addition, I wondered about the differences in the price of the basic premium depending on the insurance company. It is aptly named and in my opinion should be identical to each fund in the same canton, this would avoid annual changes to scrounge up a few francs. And finally encourage the training of general practitioners who are better able to assess the needs of their patients and manage their medications.

When it comes to granting subsidies to the population, each of us contributes to its application through our taxes: would it not be better to increase the amount of the tax deduction from our premiums in order to stabilize these increases?

There’s plenty to do, so let’s roll up our sleeves!

Josiane Nagel, Epalinges

Balthus

Concerns the article “Balthus’ sulphurous polaroids question» (“24 hours” of September 30).

Who remains to be burned at the stake in post-sixty-eight libertarian history? If the crusades of the 2020s have the merit of erecting ramparts against abusive attacks of all kinds, concerning children and adolescents, the question of the legal responsibility held by parents remains to be asked: on the sidelines of ” Balthus clichés”, we cite the difficulty for girls aged 10 to 12 to refuse a pose in the studio to an internationally renowned artist. Who has the power of the veto? Where are the representatives of parental authority alone capable of condoning or prohibiting this type of activity? This brings us back to the troubled memory of a little 13-year-old American girl frolicking in a swimming pool with gentlemen from the film industry: where were her mother, her father, at that moment, who owed her a duty of protection? It is a problem which constantly goes unnoticed in the current context and which deserves better than diplomatic silence.

Marie-Claire Dewarrat, Châtel-St-Denis

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