The Geneva Grand Council will study the feasibility of creating a cantonal public fund (illustrative image).
Photo: KEYSTONE/GAETAN BALLY
In Geneva, the health committee of the Grand Council will look into the public health insurance project carried by Pierre Maudet during his 2023 electoral campaign. The deputies sent a motion to this committee on Friday which asks to draw up a report on the risks and opportunities of such a fund.
This text, which comes from Libertés et justice sociale (LJS), the party of Pierre Maudet, was referred by 74 votes to 10 (LJS) to the health committee. It is therefore now these commissioners who will lead the work to assess the possibility of creating a cantonal public fund.
The Council of State, to which the motion was addressed last October, drew up an initial inventory of potential avenues. This report immediately notes that a single public health fund is not feasible, because the current federal legislative framework does not allow it.
On the other hand, a cantonal fund in competition with private funds is possible. But this model which was tested in Basel-City and in the canton of Vaud did not last. Several deputies expressed their doubts: the MCG François Baertschi warned against the creation of a ‘bureaucratic monster’ while the UDC Michael Andersen believes that in the end it would be financed by taxpayers.
Marc Saudan, MP for LJS, defended this model which ‘guarantees transparency’. When premiums increase, we must act, insisted the elected LJS.
Mixed structure
The inventory also notes the possibility of creating a public compensation fund responsible for setting the amount of premiums and transmitting invoices to insurers for the sake of transparency. But it would be very complex to implement and would not necessarily reduce premiums, according to the report.
The first work carried out since October shows that the model we could aim for is that of a mixed structure, delegating administrative management to an existing private partner and based on a first line of multidisciplinary care financed in part by the State. A group of experts is being formed to carry out a pilot experiment by 2030.
/ATS
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