Replies

In a nutshell, this is how the Swiss health insurance system works. They are the most insured (some would say overinsured) people in the world. They all have renters insurance, travel insurance, etc....

They have private insurance companies — some of them sell all over the world as well — and every company sells three levels of plans. Ward, semi-private, and private. Private is the highest cost and the most services, and of course it does mean that when you are hospitalized you have a private room. Semi private is what pretty much everyone has, with most services covered, and when hospitalized you are sharing a room. Ward is very cheap, even the poor can afford it on their stipend, and the elderly on theirs. It covers less, but all basics are covered, and in the hospital the patient is in a ward, with many beds in a large room. Even Ward is not shameful or disgraceful, and the care seems good.

All accidents, no matter how they happen, are covered by the employer. This removes the cottage industry of trying to prove that a person was injured on the job or not. I worked in HR and filed the papers for accidents at our company. The guy in accounting who was a pro hockey player had the most injuries, but we had a lot of skiing accidents as well.

There is no workman’s comp, and doctors will “write patients off work” for many months at a time, but workers are too ashamed to stay away that long. There is more social shaming and fear there; though the sick and injured could find a way to have a doctor write them off work for months, they do not. They stay away less than they should.

Swiss medical care is not as forward thinking or even as hygienic as here. But it’s decent. At the high end, there are doctors doing some of the world’s best treatments. There is not the lawsuit protection we have here, no CYA testing. Doctors are gods, so they won’t be as careful as they are here (for fear of malpractice). But they do have a good handle on covering everyone.