by 20 Minutes. Geneva’s Ensemble à gauche and Socialist parties want to see compulsory dental care and presented a proposal to Geneva’s parliament in mid-February. On Monday Geneva’s labour party (Parti du travail) launched a cantonal initiative for the same thing. © Nejron | Dreamstime.com The plan would be funded by compulsory salary deductions of 1%. Half of this would be categorised as a payment by employers and half by employees. In many cases the full 1% would eventually be born by employees as employers recoup their portion of cost somewhere else, through for example reduced pay increases in the future. The Geneva labour party thinks that dental care, not covered under current insurance, creates high costs for households and leads to an inequality that can be seen in the correlation between the number of cavities and socio-economic status. Professionals are not convinced the plan will work. Experiments in other countries show that 5% of people avoid the dentist even when the costs are covered. In addition, they argue, why change a system that works for 85% of the population? Martine Riesen, the president of the association of dentists of Geneva, suggests adapting the current system to cover the costs of those who can’t go for economic reasons, while educating the population on prevention. Going to the dentist is not part of some people’s culture.
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20 Minutes.
Geneva’s Ensemble à gauche and Socialist parties want to see compulsory dental care and presented a proposal to Geneva’s parliament in mid-February. On Monday Geneva’s labour party (Parti du travail) launched a cantonal initiative for the same thing.
© Nejron | Dreamstime.com
The plan would be funded by compulsory salary deductions of 1%. Half of this would be categorised as a payment by employers and half by employees. In many cases the full 1% would eventually be born by employees as employers recoup their portion of cost somewhere else, through for example reduced pay increases in the future.
The Geneva labour party thinks that dental care, not covered under current insurance, creates high costs for households and leads to an inequality that can be seen in the correlation between the number of cavities and socio-economic status.
Professionals are not convinced the plan will work. Experiments in other countries show that 5% of people avoid the dentist even when the costs are covered. In addition, they argue, why change a system that works for 85% of the population? Martine Riesen, the president of the association of dentists of Geneva, suggests adapting the current system to cover the costs of those who can’t go for economic reasons, while educating the population on prevention. Going to the dentist is not part of some people’s culture.
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