On Sunday, Swiss voters rejected a plan to get rid of the country's private health insurance system in favor of a state-run plan, the AFP reported.
Some 64 percent of the electorate shot down a plan pushed by left-leaning parties who say the current system is busting the budgets of ordinary residents, figures from polling agency gfs.bern showed.
The rejection of the plan by nearly two-thirds of voters is a major blow for pro-reform campaigners, given that recent polls had shown the No vote was likely to be 54 percent. In a 2007 referendum, 71 percent rejected similar reforms.
The country's health care system has been lauded for its efficiency, and other countries have modeled their own systems after it. Costs have been on the rise in Switzerland, however, leading to the proposed change.
"Over the past 20 years in Switzerland, health costs have grown 80 percent and insurance premiums 125 percent," ophthalmologist Michel Matter said. Matter heads the Geneva Physicians Association, which has called to get rid of the current system.
"This is not possible anymore. It has to change," Matter said.
But the current system is completely debt free, unlike the health service of France, Italy, and Britain.
"We don't have a deficit in Switzerland. It's a healthy system. Of course we can criticize a lack of transparency by some insurers, but state control isn't going to solve such problems," said Ivan Slatkine, a senior party official from the rightist Liberal Radicals.