BELLINZONA - The office that handles individual premium reductions in Ticino reported a thicker January postbag after the canton's 7.1 percent average increase, the sharpest among the large published figures. Staff said the extra cases were families just above last year's income line, not a new class of poverty.
Valais, which posted a 5.9 percent average rise, described a similar pattern. Federal rules set the subsidy machine. Cantons pay a large share of it and take the complaints.
A western pressure point
Ticino's labour market still leans on frontier workers, a tension we return to in September. Health bills do not stop at Chiasso. They land in the same household budget as the rent.