Parliament wants to reduce healthcare costs

Parliament wants to curb healthcare cost growth by introducing cost and quality targets. The council members have settled the latest disagreement in the indirect counter-proposal to the center party’s cost-saving initiative. The council recommends rejecting the referendum itself.

With the cost brake initiative, the center party wants to combat the growth of healthcare costs. According to the request, the Federal Council, parliament and the cantons must intervene if healthcare costs rise too much compared to wage developments. This would be the case if cost growth per insured person were one fifth higher than nominal wage development.

The counter-proposal essentially aims to introduce cost and quality targets for the healthcare system. The Federal Council should establish guidelines for benefits every four years in accordance with the Federal Health Insurance Act. However, he does not provide guidelines in case objectives are not achieved.

The Federal Council should also be given additional subsidiary powers when it comes to rates for residential treatment. In concrete terms, the law states that the Federal Council can make adjustments to the collective bargaining structures if they no longer appear to be appropriate and the parties cannot agree on a revision.

Ultimately, a detail in the template was controversial. The National Council and the Council of States have long agreed in principle that services will no longer be reimbursed by compulsory health insurance if a fact-based procedure has shown that they are no longer effective, appropriate or economical. But unlike the Council of States, the National Council originally wanted independent third parties to have such a procedure carried out.

On Thursday, the National Council renounced this passage in the law and the Council of States followed suit. This eliminated the last difference in the amended federal health insurance law. The proposal with various measures to keep costs under control is now ready for the final vote.

The introduction of freedom of contract for laboratories is no longer part of the proposal. Originally, the National Council was in favor of laboratory analyzes being reimbursed only if the patient’s health insurer had entered into a contract with the private laboratory that carried out the analyses. However, a report subsequently concluded that this would lead to very high additional administrative efforts and extra costs.

For the initiative committee, the counter-proposal does not go far enough. In both councils, several centrist representatives voted to accept the initiative, but failed to find a majority. The Federal Council also recommends that the people and the states reject the referendum. The voting advice is also ready for the final vote.

(jam/sda)