Translated from the article:
With its initiative, the SP wants to relieve 90 percent of the population on premiums. Specifically, there should be credits: For adults, these would be two free monthly premiums, which correspond to two medium monthly premiums throughout Switzerland. For children, there should be six monthly premiums. According to the SP, the children’s premiums would be free of charge for most families, because the cantonal premium reductions remain with the initiative.
The whole thing would be financed by a new tax surcharge on high incomes of natural persons as well as on the net income of companies in federal taxes. According to the SP, only the highest-income ten percent of the population are to be burdened additionally. The SP has the principle of AHV in mind: Those who earn a lot, pay more.
Personally, I find it inadequate that once again, all they can come up with is taxing incomes more (albeit higher incomes).
https://www.srf.ch/news/schweiz/praemienlast-praemien-steigen-wieder-sp-legt-neuen-initiativtext-vor
Posted by CloeHernando
23 Comments
Always the same SP rubbish. Taxing rich people and companies. Seems like they‘re running out of ideas…
It does make sense to make a distinction between high earners where this doesn’t cost as much compared to low earners. Just need to be extremely high earners.
Edit: actually I believe that a wealth tax and/or base on age would be more fair
At least they try to do somethig. But honestly, costs need to be reduced (esp. exorbitant fees and wages for doctors and hospitals and also the medication which costs a multiple versus neighbour countries) and just implement a model based on income. We already have like 30% people who get Prämienverbilligung, should also reduce these administrative costs.
RemindMe! 1 day
My best guess is they saw the vote on wealth inheritance taxation and thought that taxing the rich isn’t popular among the people? Idk man.
Just taxing us more for a system that is inherently too expensive also only semi helps, just moves/hides the burden a bit more.
Just give people the option to only use healthcare servics in Switzerland in case of emergencies (maybe even with a higher franchise like 5K) and go to doctors in other countries like Germany, France, Italy and Austria.
Ah yes instead of fighting the increases, we just increase taxes. SP seems to think everything can be fixed if we increase taxes.
> only the highest-income ten percent
Is there any vague number where this line would be right now?
Edit: I found this https://dam-api.bfs.admin.ch/hub/api/dam/assets/36195854/master
> 10% der bestbezahlten Arbeitnehmenden: > Fr. 12’526.- für eine 100%-Stelle
This document is from 2024, so maybe we are now round about at 13k – 13.5k CHF per month.
Not sure how and even if the company tax affects these numbers for natural persons
Increase of wealth tax, okay. Increase of income tax, not okay.
How socialist of them
the SP party line, taxing the rich, always turns out to actually be ‘let’s tax the income of those who work to finance the consumption of those who no longer need to’ (medical costs are primarily related to the elderly, everyone else is largely. net contributor to the health system). and where SP is concerned, high income is usually not particularly high. the top 10th percentile, as they say, probably includes dual income households and such so…
remember when the left wing was about workers?
SP apparently loves trying to make Switzerland more like sh***y Germany. Opportunistic Umverteilung to cater to the jealousy of its voters. You just have to look to the north of our borders to observe the result of this derangement. Cheers, by someone who grew up in Germany.
Why do all parties suck at proposing sensible measures??
I have how they always go for “high incomes” and “highest 10%”. People usually have no clue how low they are down on the income ladder. Just give a damn number so people recognize that they won’t be affected. Can’t be so damn hard.
For those interested, top 10% means you earn 12’500 gross per month or above. The median is around 6’700.
“People don’t have enough money to get by what should we do : increase taxes !”
Don’t love that it’s going after income tax, but at least it’s a better option than VAT again I guess
But really we need to get at least the obligatory insurance combined into a single payer system. The insurance companies can still get rich off selling addons
“High income” is such a vague concept.
In the spirit, it’s aimed at the top 0.1% earners, in practice it will be financed by anyone making over 100k
I look in my cristallball and see tonns of ppl complaining about health costs and at the same time declining this initiative for being “socialist” and “bad for the economy”. I say 60% no, ofc no Ständemehr.
This is very populist.
It would amount to a generational transfer from the productive working class to the unproductive retirees who already have much more of a safety net.
It would also remove a lot of pressure from trying to reduce these costs in the first place as “others will pay it”.
One thing I like about the health insurance system is that it’s a huge incentive to reduce costs. A system where one doesn’t pay for costs incurred leads to a principal-agent problem, and you end up with overstretched and underfunded services, like in the UK.
Finally, the upper income tax bands are already extremely high in most places. Making them even higher puts you in a situation where you’re both disincentivising wealthy people settling in the country while depending ever more on them.
The only real solution I see here is to increase the sector’s productivity via automation, AI to reduce admin process overhead, reduce red tape burden, and reduce planning overregulation to make it much cheaper to build health infrastructure. At the same time we need more overall productivity so incomes rise higher than costs.
Why does SP always favor the worst and unfairest type of taxes? (VAT and income)
Switzerland has always been country with less socialism and more pragmatism. But it seems like rather than focussing on costs, the parties are focussing on funding of the costs.
Unfortunately as country gets older the costs also go up for healthcare. So adding tax on earning population to fund healthcare of non-working populations seems a bit weird.
Solutions should be looking into
– how to use more generics vs branded medicine
– how to avoid over diagnosing
– how to reduce cost of elderly care
—
In any other country going after higher income people is much easier because it would only impact 10% of population. 90% wouldn’t have problems with that and would love to vote in that direction.
But this is a slippery slope. In the end if costs are not controlled then no tax would be enough. In few years another tax hike would be needed. Cost side of the equation has to be addressed too.
Health insurance is a scam. I know it was privatized to boost competition and reduce bureaucracy but be honest, this country is too small for real competition. (See coop vs migros absolutely having the same products and prices or how most pharmacy chains are owned by the same company, galenica).
Competition somehow did not push down the prices and instead of having the federal government as a money eating wasserkopf, now we have many many hungry, redundant clones. The system did not become more efficient. Or cheaper. Or better. Quite the opposite. So then why are we keep funding something from tax money what does not serve the people? A system which treats doctors as fraudsters and patients as “unerwünscht“?
When will people understand that if the arms of the octopus are demanding more and more food, then you kill the octopus and not give it the menu and start negotiating what to pick and what not to pick!
For fucks sake do it on wealth not income. There’s enough wealthy here.