Geneva and Vaud want health insurance premiums to match the costs of benefits. The two Councils of State ask their parliaments to table three cantonal initiatives in this direction with the Federal Assembly.
With identical texts, Vaud and Geneva are stalling on Ticino which initiated this process, said Wednesday the governments of two French-speaking cantons in a joint press release. They hope others will join them. The three projects of cantonal initiatives ask the Chambers to modify the federal law on the supervision of health insurance.
The first text, entitled “For premiums in line with costs”, provides for the effective and systematic reimbursement by insurers of premiums that exceed costs. Given the differences in the amount of premiums from one canton to another, this measure would also guarantee fair participation by the cantons in the constitution of the national reserves of each fund.
More transparency
The second initiative, “For fair and adequate reserves”, targets the level of these reserves. It requests the introduction of a concrete threshold at 150% of the legal limit. Beyond that, the insurers will have to reimburse the insured. The current legal basis leaves them free to do so or not, allowing them to accumulate reservations.
As for the initiative “More strengths for the cantons”, it wants to restore transparency by transmitting all the information enabling the cantons to take a position in the procedure for approving health insurance premiums. In 2019, the Federal Office of Public Health no longer communicated the 2020 premium data, but only the projected costs of the funds. (Ps / nxp)
Created: 15.01.2020, 18h53
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