Hi,

As far as I know, I have to have health insurance "within 3 months" of arrival. But I am a little bit confused about within 3 months term.

My wife arrived here on 19 July. Can she bought a health insurance starting from October? Or it has to be from September.

My insurance ends in December. I will switch to SwissCare, so both we can have lower price insurance. If buying from October is ok, she can buy 3 month insurance from other company rather than buying 6 months and still switch to SwissCare at the end of the year.

They'll backdate the payments for the health insurance to the beginning of your stay.

Proof of medical insurance has to be supplied to complete your registration with the commune.

We arrived one month ago, and already applied for the Residency Permit (B).
So, They will not process it before getting proof of insurance from me? Is that how it works?

No. They should process your residency permit anyway (certainly they did for us in Geneva). You have 3 months to sort the health insurance, and the residency permit shouldn't take THAT long!

Hmmm,

Possibly somebody will be able to help me with my query:

I arrived here in Sept 07 on an L-permit which lasted a year (I was here as a post-grad after university). Now I have a real life job and am looking for health insurance.

My query is, I now have a B permit, after the L permit, and I have been here for over a year, and never once has anyone asked me for health insurance. I have never recieved a letter from the Kanton or anything, and now I am wondering if I get my health insurance (I have just applied) will I be charged for the last year????

Now panicking a bit as that would be a lot of money!

Many thanks,

Caoimhe

As funny as it sounds, they will backdate it to the date that your
wife arrived. So, you have to pay for insurance in the past.

Only in Switzerland, huh?

No, we didn't have to pay insurance for the past.

She bought the insurance on Oct 1st and no one asked for insurance during July 19 till Sep 30

Thank You so much for your prompt response. Everything is new and "headaching"!
Hopefully your are right and the permit will not take that long...I'll keep my fingers crossed just in case

By the way, any suggestions on Health Insurance companies that have English speaking representatives?
I tried with CarenaSchweiz...and no luck so far.
I am looking for a family plan, 2 children and 2 adults, no deductible for the kids and between 300 to 500 for the adults. Good service, free choice of doctors (desired) and good "processing times".
I am not asking for too much. Right?

Hi,

Can someone help me with my situation...
I went to Switzerland in March, and apply for B permit (EU country). Meanwhile, I got pregnant in May. It costed me lots of money for visiting doctors each time... I've paid more than 1000 Euro my own (because without resident visa I can ont apply for health insurance). I was waiting for my permit every day, but was never ready. So, I decided gone back home and give birth here. Just last week, I finally received my B permit (I was waiting for almost 6 months). I am out of Switzerland at moment, and will go back after my baby is 3 months old (next year April). What should I do with my health insurance? Do I need to apply one now? Or, I can apply it after I get back again? Do my baby need one as well.....

Search on this sub-forum for Jenny, who's arranged many insurances for people who post here (including me!). She's English but has been here for ever, so knows the systems.

BTW, the insurance will be for each individual within the family rather than an overall plan. And in our case (2 adults, 2 kids) it worked out more efficient to have the adults with one insurer and the kids with another. The kids have no deductible whereas hubby and I have the full 2500 CHF - if you run the numbers either 'all or nothing' for the deductible makes most sense for averagely healthy people anticipating 1-2 doctor visits for minor things each year.

Our adult policies have free choice of doctor, the kids have to have a specified doctor, but realistically I'm not going to trawl them around a different one each time! It's flexible; we've already changed the kids' doctor once from the 'pick out of a hat' one a neighbour told us about when we needed a name to put on the form, to the English-speaking, wonderful-with-children one that lives just up the road from us that we found when my son got chickenpox. The bill for this went straight to the insurer and I just got a bill slip for the 10% balance a month or so later, with 5 CHFs to pay.

We're paying around 215 CHFs each for the adult policies, and 75 CHFs each for the kids; this is for the standard basic plus the run-of-the-mill supplementaries covering ambulance travel and so on.

Hope this helps.

kodokan

I'd like to recommend Jenny too - she had no issue with finding us the best deals, and signing up the adults with a different company than the kids to get us that deal...she was extremely efficient even when we sat on the forms for a few days.

One you have identified which insurer you are using and lodged the forms, for the basic they are *required* to cover you. We got extras for the kids and they backdated the 'compulsory' but only invoiced us for the 'extras' from the current month...and they didn't backdate as far as they technically could have...and they also gave us a good wide payment date for the first invoice (invoiced us for the first three months but allowed us 2 months to payment due)...and the renewals for 2009 came a few days later so we already know what our premiums will be and when they are going to be due...

Hope that helps!

swisspea
PS. -edited to add, we took our son to the Pead, and there was no up-front fee. They said they process first with the insurer, then will send us a bill for the difference in a month or six-weeks time. Same at the hospital (my son has a specialist) - no up-front fee, they didn't even need our policy number - we just told them the insurer and that it was in 'progress' and that was adequate - no charges at the kinderspital and they even dispensed meds from the pharmacy at the hospital onto our 'account' rather than having to pay for them...I was suitably impressed!

I've applied for student permit in switzerland. But I dont know if they ask for buying Health Insurance or not ?