Just moved to Switzerland? Your health insurance is sorted in minutes.

Tell us when you moved in — you will see straight away by when you need to be insured.

If you live in Switzerland, you must take out basic health insurance. Not because of your job, not depending on your income, and not optional if you happen to be healthy. It applies to everyone with residence here, from the first day.

That surprises people arriving from countries with a national health service or an employer-provided plan. The Swiss logic is different: the state does not run the insurance and your employer does not buy it for you. You choose your insurer yourself, from around 40 private companies — but the product they sell you is defined by federal law and is identical everywhere. What differs is the price.

And the other side of that, plainly: if you simply don't sign up, the problem doesn't go away. Your canton will assign you to an insurer, you owe the premiums from your start date anyway, and a late start without a good reason adds a surcharge of 30 to 50% of your premium — charged for twice the length of the delay, up to a maximum of five years.

If your three months are already up, though: don't panic. Sign up now — the sooner you do, the smaller the consequences, and where the delay was genuinely unavoidable there is no surcharge at all.

This trips up more people than any other detail, because the answer differs from what the law says for Swiss nationals. If you hold a residence permit — B, C, L or similar — the relevant date is the day you register with the residents' registration office of your municipality, not the day you first flew in and not the day your permit card finally arrives in the post.

Your cover then begins on that same registration date. So if you registered in March and sign up in May, you are insured back to March — and you owe the premiums for March and April as well. That is not a penalty, it is simply the other side of being covered retroactively: an emergency in your second week here would have been paid for.

Which is why waiting achieves nothing. Signing up early costs exactly the same — it just spreads the payments and removes the risk of missing the deadline.

If you move here to live and work, the answer is almost always yes. But there are genuine exceptions — and it matters a great deal whether you fall outside the rules automatically or have to apply, because applications have a deadline and can be refused.

Outside the obligation automatically — nothing to file:

• Students from the EU, EFTA or the UK who do not work in Switzerland. Your home cover simply continues, and your European Health Insurance Card is the proof. You are not being “exempted” from anything — the Swiss rule never applied to you in the first place.
• Employees posted from an EU or EFTA state or the UK who stay in their home social security system, evidenced by an A1 certificate. Keep the certificate somewhere safe; that is all.
• Diplomatic staff and people with international-organisation privileges. Note that this follows your own status, not your employer's: locally hired colleagues at the same organisation are usually fully subject to the obligation.

Exempt only on application — and only within the same three months: students from outside the EU/EFTA with equivalent cover; people posted from countries with a social security agreement; holders of an EU/EFTA residence permit for people not in gainful employment — early retirees or financially independent residents — who keep equivalent cover from home; and a few narrow cases where Swiss insurance would clearly worsen existing cover. Your canton decides, and you will need written confirmation from your foreign insurer or authority.

Think it through before you apply, because these decisions stick: for students and non-working permit holders an exemption cannot be withdrawn without a special reason, and for people posted under a social security agreement it cannot be withdrawn at all.

One thing an international policy never does: replace the obligation on its own. Cigna, Allianz Care, Aetna International and similar plans can be evidence inside one of those procedures, and they can be a sensible extra. But if you live and work here, there is no procedure they would fit.

Swiss insurance vocabulary translates badly. Three terms cause almost all the confusion:

• Franchise — nothing to do with businesses. It is your annual deductible (or excess, if you are used to British insurance): what you pay yourself each year before the insurer pays anything. Adults choose between CHF 300 and CHF 2,500. A high deductible noticeably lowers your monthly premium — worth it if you rarely see a doctor.
• Selbstbehalt — this is coinsurance, not a co-pay. Once your deductible is used up, you keep paying 10% of further costs, but only up to CHF 700 a year (CHF 350 for children). So your worst case for the year is your deductible plus that cap — nothing open-ended.
• KVG and LAMal — the same federal law, in German and in French. If a colleague in Geneva talks about LAMal and one in Zurich about KVG, they mean exactly the same thing. Neither is a company name. The same goes for the rest of the vocabulary: on a French-language bill your Selbstbehalt appears as quote-part, your insurer is a caisse maladie, and the subsidy is a subside.

And the distinction that matters most: basic insurance is not the cheap version of private insurance. Basic (KVG/LAMal) is the compulsory foundation everyone has. Supplementary (VVG/LCA) is optional and sits on top for things like dental work, a private hospital room or wider cover abroad. You cannot take the second instead of the first.

This is the part newcomers rarely believe at first. For basic insurance, every insurer must accept you — no health questionnaire, no waiting period, no surcharge for a pre-existing condition, no rejection. Your medical history is irrelevant.

And because the benefits are written into federal law, they are the same at all ~40 insurers. The same doctors, the same hospitals, the same medicines. Nobody gets better basic cover by paying more.

Three things do move your premium:

• Where you live — premiums follow federally defined regions, so your address matters more than your canton alone.
• Your deductible (CHF 300–2,500) — higher deductible, lower monthly premium.
• Your model — agreeing to call a telemedicine line or see a designated family doctor first typically cuts the premium by up to around 25%, with no change to what is covered.

If you get one of these wrong, you have not lost cover — you have only paid more than necessary, and you can change it for the next January.

The average premium for 2026 is CHF 393.30 a month (federal figure), but the spread is wide: Geneva and Ticino sit well above it, central Switzerland well below. Children cost substantially less, and every person needs their own policy — there is no free family cover the way there is in some countries.

Two things newcomers should know early. First, your employer contributes nothing and the premium does not scale with your salary — it is the same for everyone of your age in your region on the same product. Second, and less well known: cantons subsidise premiums for lower and middle incomes, including many people who would not think of themselves as eligible. Rules and deadlines differ by canton, and some are tied to how soon after arrival you apply — so check with your cantonal compensation office (Ausgleichskasse / caisse de compensation), which handles subsidies in most cantons; a few run a separate office for it. Don't assume you won't qualify.

• Your doctor bills you, not your insurer. For most outpatient care Switzerland uses tiers garant: you get the invoice, you pay it, then you send it to your insurer to be reimbursed. Hospitals usually bill the insurer directly. Nothing has gone wrong.
• Documents arrive in the local language. Policies, invoices and reminders usually come in German, French or Italian. Several insurers do offer service in English — worth asking about before you choose, because you will be reading these letters for years.
• Accidents are usually covered by your employer. If you work at least eight hours a week for the same employer, their accident insurance covers your leisure accidents too — skiing, football, cycling. You can then suspend accident cover in your health insurance and pay a bit less. Just remember to switch it back on if you go below eight hours, change jobs or stop working.
• Routine dentistry is not covered. Check-ups, fillings and orthodontics you pay yourself, or insure separately. Basic insurance does step in for defined medical situations — a severe unavoidable disease of the chewing system, dental problems caused by a serious general illness, or dental work needed before treating one, such as before heart surgery or chemotherapy.

This matters more to you than to most Swiss residents, so it is worth getting right. The answer depends on where you travel.

Within the EU, EFTA or the UK: your European Health Insurance Card gives you medically necessary treatment at local rates, handled under coordination rules — much like being insured there. Ask your insurer for the card once you are signed up.

Everywhere else: basic insurance pays at most twice what the same treatment would have cost in Switzerland. In countries with high medical costs — the United States above all — that can leave a very large gap.

Two limits apply everywhere: planned treatment abroad is generally not covered at all, and repatriation is never covered by basic insurance. If you travel often or your family is far away, that is precisely the gap supplementary cover is designed to close — and it is easiest to get while you are healthy.

Findbetter is the comparison platform; the insurance itself is arranged by our partner Northlake Partners, who are FINMA-regulated. Compare premiums for your address — it takes a few minutes.