Hi All,

I guess this is my first swiss fine

So my wife came on the 4th of January. I got health insurance sent away for her on at the beginning of February. I got her first bill in the middle of March charged from the 1st of March.

I thought great, I don't have to pay those extra months. I did send a copy of her permit etc. to the insurance company which has her date of arrival etc. and I am positive I wrote the insurance to start on the 4th January on the form I sent away, but alas the form has a printed 1st March on it...but I was sure I changed that (this is the unfilled out version in my inbox)

Excuses aside, it's my fault. I should have alerted the insurance to the fact that I'm being undercharged etc. etc. but I got a letter today saying they are going to find me if I can't prove she was insured in this time.

So does anyone know how much the fine is for this?

Everyone living here has to have some sort of healthy insurance and this is a common mistake.
I tried to get away with it when I first came here and you just have to backdate payments to when the individual's permit started. Don't think there's a penalty. I haven't needed touse it once since I've been here /

If it's a big cost you can spread the catch up over a few months.

Assuming your a uk citizen, isn't there someway that you could say that your wife's E111 was covering her for this period?

in the UK you have a national insurance card , it covers you for up to one year i think ,after you leave the country .do you have anythink like this ?

I do hope there is no fine. It was a genuine mistake, since I did get my insurance done back in October fine. The letter from the canton says her insurance company is assura though. I signed her up with wincare sanitas though. Perhaps they are the same company under a different name?

She does have a national insurance card. But I think it's the EHIC that you mean.

She was a british citizen at the time. But she travelled on a non-EU passport because she didn't have her UK passport yet. I know all very confusing.

Thats a bit strange, i wasn't fined - they just forcibly enrolled me with Helsana!

I'm pretty sure there was something about an extra supplement in the letter. My French is terrible though.

Will confirm tomorrow.

Neither apply once a person becomes registered as resident in Switzerland.

If there's one thing I've learned about Swiss bureaucracy it's that all these rules that they make are valid all the time and in every case, unless you get someone on a nice day. I managed to avoid paying over a years worth of krankenkasse by shopping around. I finally found one (not the cheapest one by far) that was willing to fudge the dates a little so I didn't have to backpay all those premiums.

It can be done!