Summary
Swiss voters rejected a $5.6 billion (CHF 5 billion) motorway expansion plan (52.7%) and two proposals to ease eviction rules and tighten subletting controls (53.8% and 51.6%).
Environmental concerns and housing fairness were key to the opposition.
Meanwhile, a healthcare reform to standardize funding for outpatient and inpatient care narrowly passed (53.3%), marking a rare success for health policy changes.
The results highlight public resistance to certain government-backed initiatives.
Voter turnout was 45%.
3/4 wins.
The health insurance lobby wins their vote, but the rest is a win for poorer and middle classes and environmentalists.
I’m not surprised the EFAS got approved. It is a complex topic where you would need to read almost the whole KVG to truly understand what’s going on and the messaging of the opponents was sub-optimal to put it mildly.
The opposing opinion in the official booklet, at least for the German version, was incomprehensible and without concrete links to the substance of the issue or their claims. E.g. HOW are the insurers getting more power? What will they be able to do, that they can’t already? What are the absolute numbers, that show that premiums will rise, when the official report mentions sinking costs? Why will the quality of care deteriorate? They mention privatization, but don’t tell you what would facilitate that…
The Pro side mainly stressed the positive of correcting the disincentives towards cheaper ambulatory treatments through changing to the uniform financing formula, which in and of itself and without further context is a valid and good point. Both substantively and politically.
And my biggest problem lies with the official ‘examining review’ from the Federal Chancellery. I know it is normal to try and project what the changes in law could affect in reality. Imho they did it in a biased way. Why am I saying that? Because every argument and scenario they brought up was positive and basically the pro-opinion reads like a summary of the official review. Also: When making simplifications from the actual legal text, they used a more positive description (E.g. “coordination” vs. “restriction” talking about the states limiting offered services). There aren’t many absolute numbers to understand just how much money will shift between insurers, states and patients and what that would mean. In such a situation it is even more incumbent on the opponents to make the downsides clear and fill those gaps.
Drove from Geneva to Lausanne the other day, the traffic was crawling the whole way. It was busy but not dreadfully so
Absolutely fuck all to do with the size of the motorway or the density of the traffic but 1000% the fault of the selfish, arrogant Geneva banker wankers in their Beamers and Mercs, hogging the fast lane and driving WAY too close to the car in front, causing tailbacks by braking too harshly
Start fining these cunts and making them take time off work to attend driving courses, that’ll solve the entire motorway problem
Traffic flow would theoretically be smoother if everyone understood basic fluid dynamics concepts, but their selfishness would make that pointless because it would turn into “yes, I could go slower to make traffic go more smoothly for the people behind me, but fuck them! I gotta get my caramel white chocolate macchiato!”
if everyone understood basic fluid dynamics concepts
Man, y’all have a much higher bar over there.
Only if “over there” is in my brain because I’m in the U.S. Worse, I’m in Indiana. But I am trying to get out of both.
Ok so you’re west of me and not east of me, but we agree on the need for basic life skills in the curriculum here. How not to bounce a check and fluid dynamics.
Technically I am both west and east of you due to the shape of the Earth but now I just feel like being obnoxious and yes, we agree.
Isn’t the swiss railway system pretty fucking good? Why did you drive instead of taking a train?
If you don’t take the train regularly it’s also pretty fucking expensive. If you need to take the train more often there are options to buy a “subscription” so you only pay half price for the ticket or even one where you can ride all year for “free” but the threshold is pretty high.
Don’t forget all the diplomats. Additionally, they will never be pulled over. They can basically do whatever they want.
One of my most radical opinions is that all cars should be blackboxed and outfitted with sensors for said blackbox. If the car honks or brakes too sharply, the sensor data is recorded a time prior to and after the event, and a police report is filed. If you want to un-file the police report, or report it as some sort of triviality, this should be done on the website of the traffic police, and is not guaranteed. This way, insignificant events have an out, and repeat “trivial” offenders can be statistically correlated and be fined or have their license revoked.
Whether your insurance company should know these stats… IDK. I know this entire idea is very surveillance-state, which I don’t like. But I am really thoroughly bothered by how expensive, dangerous, and otherwise harmful motorism is to all of us.
Whether your insurance company should know these stats… IDK.
If this is the direction we’re going in, definitely. It should also be available to your medical and life insurance companies because unsafe driving raises your blood pressure and therefore raises risk of a cardiac event in the long term (meaning you should have higher medical insurance premiums) + you have a higher risk of dying in a traffic accident, so they should be able to decline payouts for anything traffic related automatically.
Maybe also let financial institutions have access to stats here. People with unsafe driving records would get worse rates for everything because they’re more likely to die and stop paying their debts, but in particular they’d get higher interest on their car payments because of the extra risk involved
I wonder why there might be government backed initiatives to give more power to landlords
I have no idea what the situation is in Switzerland, but in Holland we had a pro-business, center right government for many years before their neglect of the common people caused so much rot that the far right has taken power and begun trying to smash up everything.
Anyway, their neo-liberal approach was that there must be a market solution to every problem. So, not enough affordable rental properties must mean that landlords don’t want to rent their properties because renters have too good of a deal. So the only possible solution must be to deregulate the rental market as much as possible, including getting rid of renter protections.
Again, I have no idea about the motivations or history in Switzerland, just sharing a perspective from a lower altitude.
The words you used, in the order you used them, are not making sense to me. I’m only being partially sarcastic.
Let me try again.
People cannot find places to live.
The government decides that is because landlords cannot make enough profit.
So the government tries to remove protections for renters, to benefit renters.
Good for them but 45% voter turnout? Even the US has had better turnout for at least the last decade.
45% is completely normal here. We have votes every couple months, you vote when you’re interested.
Our “yearly voter turnout” is around 76%
When you get to vote for multiple submissions every 2-3 months, turnout tends to be lower. Probably only people who hold a strong opinion about the topics of the current vote will actually vote.
About 80% of voters did vote over the last few years, just not every time.
Oh? Do you have a source for that? I’d really love to confirm it to be true ❤
It is a quote from the Author of Heute Abstimmung!, see here: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/politologin-stadelmann-steffen-im-interview-595917375269 it is the response to the question: Die Stimmbeteiligung liegt heute bei rund 50 Prozent. Ist das gut oder schlecht?
