Performance retention, quality orientation and more research - Health Monitor 2023
During the Corona pandemic, the rapid development and market introduction of new medicines and vaccines seemed urgent. Even today, voters are open to some proposals.
The proposal to allow access to new medicines as soon as they are approved is still clearly the most popular. Also supported by a majority is the newly queried possibility of provisional approvals with flexible pricing models.
After the first price increase for medicines in 2022 after more than a decade of de facto price stability, the opinion of the respondents is also less favourable: 75 percent consider Swiss medicine prices to be too high. After an increase of 11 percentage points within a year, this is the sixth highest value measured since the beginning of the Health Monitor in 1997. In the long-term trend, voters increasingly want statutory maximum prices to apply.
In addition to quality and quantity, the Swiss healthcare system should continue to focus on the free choice of doctors and free access to new medicines. Increasingly, respondents want a healthcare system that covers all services, in which the state regulates rather than the market and community responsibility prevails. More than a third would like to see an expansion of the benefits catalogue. However, the majority would leave the scope at the current level.
