Health insurance premiums will rise by about three percent in Switzerland next year, according to price comparison site Comparis.ch.

Read the full article: Health insurance costs to rise next year

In other news, the Pope admits to "being Catholic" and Mr Bear admits to occasional defaecation in the woods.

Don't even start me on death and taxes :-)

Health prices increase every year...

Also who cares about what Comparis have to say they are not neutral or unbiased, all Swiss basic cover has to be set under swiss law and acceptance of pricing on an annual basis....

Also, if the costs are underestimated from a company it will give the punters immediate opportunity to break their contract and move, as happened to a provider last year, whilst causing serious damage to miscalculating company.

I think the Local is some kind of social experiment, to see how forum members react to ridiculously obvious information, disguised as news.

Because really, the cover has been blown.... I mean what else could you come up with..??

I could make more exciting news than that, and I live in a 1000 inhabitant village in the middle of nowhere - The Local - where are you based??

Here's the news from romandie...
TODAY - the 100year old man of the village tried hitching to the next village because he missed his train. The centenarian of the village usually does his Tuesday grocery shop in neighbouring village, but today, his alarm clock must have let him down as he was left begging for mercy, roadside, waiting for a morning commuter to take him on his way. Reporters say he was waiting for at least 10 minutes (story soon to be continued on THE LOCAL.COM (or whatever the domain...))

Don't knock The Local. It's from there that I learnt that things can be a bit more expensive here than in bordering countries, and that the reason there aren't any nice beaches is because the country is land locked.

I'm hoping for an article soon on whether the native language of the Swiss is English or not, because I was having difficulties earlier trying to explain something to a local.

The scary part is that I've actually started to see The Local Crapper articles appearing on other websites I read (such as Slashdot), so its purpose (driving up page hits and thus revenues) is working.

Naturally, I've taken the time to explain to other readers that the local is not news, that they simply plagiarize and translate content from other unattributed sites. I don't expect to significantly slow their page hit growth, though.