Some hefty increases in premium:

http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/sto...anton-24272283

(Link in German)

Especially if you're 'lucky' enough to live in Neuchâtel, Vaud, Geneva and Jura.

Thank goodness, as my pension fund likes to remind me, there is no inflation in Switzerland.

If only my pension fund inflated in the same way......

Especially that a percent increase on prices already quite higher means even more raise, in actual CHF.

It's depressing, i'm going to the doctor tomorrow to get additional medicines

I don't think it's inflation. I think it's more and more people using health services, particularly as we get older. Supply and demand

In addition, I feel like costs could be brought down particularly with medications. There's no logical reason why I can get a bottle of 100 paracetamol tablets in the USA for a few pennies per tablet but here I pay 50 times (or more) per tablet.

There is no inflation here, LOL. Health insurance is not within the consumer basket which is used to calculate inflation

Just like "Ausgesteuerte" (people who no longer get unemployment money and move to social security) aren't within the unemployment rate.

See, we too got our fake news.

Far from being only that. In fact there are a few news around showing how each "actors" are rejecting the blame to each others (a funny "dance" while in fact nothing changes and the citizen pay for all that).

They mention that first, the raise is allegedely due to lack of funds in some insurance companies, which they contradict by showing that others have excessively high amount of reserves.
Also, that they don't give back the savings made from the changes in Tarmed.
Also that their internal admin costs are higher, and salaries of numerous actors have significantly increased in few years.
They haven't done any efforts to reduce admin costs (to which, anyway, population somehow refused by rejecting the unique caisse, among other reasons).
That, as you said, some medicines are still priced a lot here, despite being produced here and sold much cheaper abroad (so the market is voluntarily higher, somehow).

Among with the fact that people appears to be happy consumers of any health "product" (including visit for GP about anything).
That the doctors have unclear and ever changing requirements (the new trend is that one should not take antibiotic treatment to the end, sometimes 2 weeks of treatment was overkill and make virus more resistant than if it was only 7 days of treatment).
That there is a "compensation" system in place, apparently, to compensate some cost reduction made in X, it's allegedely common practice to increase expenses in "Y". As an example, there is a very high increase of hours charged "without seeing the patient", the additional alleged work made outside of consultation (I think it was +600% increase or something very high).
Apparently also the government things to control and enforce the laws and rules are only doing minimum efforts.
And the political parties, are not showing much engagement in the topic.

Oh I could continue but it's probably too long to list all of the issues.

PS: the sources are in numerous media, look around, exemple>

https://translate.google.com/transla...109&edit-text=

Unfortunately it works both ways....we paid around USD 300 for a prescription for 2 prescription strength Vitamin K tablets a couple of years ago (emergency situation, needed to improve blood clotting ASAP). Wasn't about to play around and see if over the counter versions worked.

Price here...CHF 9.10 for 5.

So average increases for the last years : 4.6%..

... takes calculator.....

...therefore our premium will be 28000 / year when I reach 80.....

...or close to 50% of expected income...

Madness...

jos

Your calculation raises hope though: At these premies the governement will have to pay "Prämienverbilligung" (subsidy) to almost everybody (except those 200 really rich ones of course ).
Governement won't like that and might actually ACT.

Something like this also works both ways. Suppose you need a particular treatment but your insurance refuses to pay. So your physician spends time writing to insurance, justifying your treatment, in effect obtaining authorization for you. I don’t expect to get that for free....and it could take more time than the time You spend with your doctor. In another situation, your doctor has to figure out which treatment to give you - to plan your chemo, look at your pathology report, etc.

I understand that there is likely waste in the system. But I also want to point out that treating a patient sometimes goes beyond seeing the patient and may involve planning and other activities outside the time spent in an appointment.

the system is simply not sustainable. in a world that is ever more overpopulated, one needs to think about the ethical dilemma of how much is it worth to keep a person alive.

Well... thanks for pointing out but I am quite familiar with the entire system. I bet there are not so many around here who check each lines of the tarmed system and all the other details.

I am saying that to attract your attention that it;s not about "off-visit" billing that I was refering to, but the practice of doing that has dramatically increased in the last few years, without any form of justification or verification possible. I can't remember the source, a professional speaking in public about that, mentionned how much that increased in few years and that it was highly suspicious and semi-officially admited that it was a "pot-pourri" and common practice to inflate the bills and also in case of ignorance of other lines.

On the very same show they mentioned how tarmed was complicated anyway and how nobody checking, which contributed to the ambiant lethargy.


Summary: it appears you speak about the practice of "off-visit billing", but I am talking about the increase of that practice, with numbers far off the charts and representing an anomaly or misuse (think it was 600% or something, my sources are lacking).
In other word, it's merely a tick box in the tarmed system, often allegedely ticked or inflated, with a lot of inaccuracy.

Just found out our family will see an increase of over 13% Is that even possible??? We are in ZH, on a telmed model and some of us are on the highest franchises - I guess it has to do with a lowering of discounts for both of these options, although this thread seemed to indicate these changes from 2019 only... does this mean we can expect another increase like that next year??? And that with a new family member on the way

Or, OTC meds aside, you could look at the cost of hip replacement here ($11,187) compared to the US ($87,987)

From here.

On the plus side - at least the pain relief might be cheaper...

The only solution is "Logan's Run carousel"

A discussion which always gets pushed down again, but if we want to keep everybody who wants to be alive regardless of costs alive to the max, system will only get more expensive especially given all the very expensive treatments for rare diseases coming up, and it brings moral dilemma's.

The overpopulation is not the cause of the rise in costs tho, 100 people paying for 10 being ill, is equal to 1000 people paying for 100 being ill. Due to savings based on things "normally" getting cheaper on larger scale it should even lower the price.

More is possible so we do more, which costs more money.
More gets prescribed which costs money.
Society sees people getting older, so they have longer periods of need of medical support (older years are on average more expensive), which costs money.

I think in future there will also be more discussion about a person's own responsibility, and if society should pay for things that people might have inflicted on themselves, being overweighted for example, or doing risky sports, or be drunk when breaking a jaw by walking into a lightning pole, expensive surgery after a carcrash due to overspeeding.

In short there's 3 options.

- start paying for less treatments.
- lower the costs of existing care.
- raise the price we have to pay.

There's no ideal scenario.

Yep for an American it's cheaper to go to Spain, have a hip replacement, party for a year, go snowboarding in Austria, break another hip. Have it again replaced and then go back home.

Using round numbers, my insurance premium per month cost 350CHF to begin with. I'm with CSS.

2015 it went up to 400CHF, increase:14%

2016 it went up to 450 CHF increase: 12.5%

2017 it went up to 475CHF increase 5.5%

I'm sort of appalled. Then there are still bills to pay before the insurance kicks in and after it does too. I don't even feel like I've got good care for that. But there is nothing to be done, as far as I can tell. You just have to suck it and weep.