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How Swiss healthcare costs have ‘doubled’ since 2000

Recently released figures show that health insurance premiums have doubled in the past 20 years, with some Swiss households spending almost one fifth of their salary on healthcare.

Published: 9 December 2019 11:31 CET

How Swiss healthcare costs have 'doubled' since 2000

Photo: Depositphotos

Figures from the Swiss Trade Union show that costs have increased by 120 percent on average since the year 2000.

The increases are much higher than wages, while other cost-mitigating changes like rebates for people on lower incomes have also failed to keep up with rising premiums.

READ MORE: How Swiss residents are 'paying too much' for medicines and health insurance premiums

Couples with household salaries between 60,000 and 90,000 francs spend on average 14 percent of their salaries on healthcare.

In some of the more expensive cantons such as Bern and Zurich, the amount can be higher than 20 percent.

While lower income Swiss will be eligible for reductions and rebates, middle-income Swiss are often hit the hardest by increases in healthcare costs.

More going into debt to pay for healthcare

The impact of the cost increases can be seen in relation to household debt for healthcare.

At the turn of the millennium, just over a third (36 percent) of households in Switzerland had healthcare debts higher than 5000 francs.

At the present time, 59 percent of households had accrued debts of over 10,000 francs for healthcare costs.

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Swedish Fiscal Policy Council criticises 'too large' electricity subsidy

“I don’t think all the households with dramatically high energy prices think the subsidy was too large,” Sweden’s finance minister, Elisabeth Svantesson, said after the report was published.

The council argued that it would have been better to offer a less extensive subsidy, with the government instead focusing more on support aimed at particularly vulnerable households.

“If they had not offered such large subsidies in those areas, they would have had the opportunity to do other things which we believe would have been better for the economy,” said Lars Heikensten, chairman of the Fiscal Policy Council.

The money could, according to the council, have also been used for measures aimed at increasing economic growth – measures which the report states are “conspicuously absent”.

The council’s vice chairman, Lisa Laun, agreed that there was good reason to give a certain amount of economic support to households. She did, however, point out that subsidies in general are problematic, as the best way to lower electricity prices is to reduce the demand for electricity.

Svantesson argued that the government had instead made sure that households were partly refunded for the cost of capacity charges, adding that it would “not have been possible” to give more tailored support to vulnerable households.

“We used the capacity fees to refund the fees households and companies had paid in,” she said.

The council argued, however, that the government would have been better able target measures to vulnerable households in its budget, without also fuelling inflation, if the energy price subsidy had been less extensive.

The price subsidy announced in January, which compensated for households across the country for energy prices in November and December last year, came in for particularly harsh criticism, as households in southern Sweden had already received compensation through the subsidy announced by the previous government prior to the election.

Svantesson, however, said that the price support subsidy announced in January had not compensated users in southern Sweden twice, as it covered a different time period.

The council was also critical of the energy price support subsidy offered to companies in southern Sweden, arguing that companies to a large extent have been able to pass on their increased energy costs to consumers.

“High consumers of electricity also often have long, fixed energy contracts, meaning that there’s a risk that the subsidy for companies actually exceeds the increased costs they’ve paid for electricity,” Laun said.

The government wanted to subsidise companies as soon as possible, Svantesson explained.

“Of course, there’s almost always room for improvement. If we offer some type of energy subsidy in the future, it’s good to take these viewpoints into consideration.”

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