Today's NYT praises the Swiss health care system - with no public option - on page A1. This is a biased hatchet job on the public option.
The two main sources in support? Bill O'Reilly of Faux Noose and Regina Herzlinger, described as "a Harvard Business School professor who has studied the Swiss approach extensively," but anyone paying attention in health policy knows her as the queen bee of consumer-directed health care, a right-wing deregulatory agenda that even the Bush Administration couldn't embrace with a Republican Congress in tow.
I'll make it simple. Consumer driven health care = consumers pay a lot more out of pocket for health care.
The article didn't quote or mention any Democrat or progressive who has studied Switzerland's health system, widely viewed in Europe as too expensive. The article did mention that the power in the Swiss system is the ability to enforce price cuts for doctors, hospitals, and drug and device makers, without asking any of the US trade associations what they thought about this model. In short, the AMA, AHA, PhRMA and BIO hate Swiss price controls.
As some commenters to this diary have noted, the basic Swiss health insurance package is provided on a non-profit basis: AHIP would rather move to Canada than embrace that reform. Imagine, all US HMOs and health plans providing the basic package without profits!
The Swiss reform idea is full of holes for the Republicans. But they aren't interested in real reform, just preventing anything that might work.