Swiss Health Insurance: Some Premiums Have Tripled in the Last Decade

At the end of September 2024, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) announced that the average premium for mandatory health insurance will be 6.0 percent higher in the coming year. According to the FOPH, the average premium across all insurance offers for 2025 is 378.70 francs.

By comparison, in 2015 the average premium was still 274.10 francs. That means premiums have gone up by 38.2 percent, on average, over the past 10 years. This price hike has occurred in spite of the fact that more residents now use cost-saving measures like high insurance deductibles or managed care models that limit healthcare options, compared to ten years ago.

Premiums have developed very differently

The moneyland.ch analysis shows that premiums have developed very differently depending on age, place of residence, health insurance provider, insurance model, deductible, and accident coverage. The study accounted for all 2025 offers for adults aged 26 or older for insurance without accident coverage, for the 300-franc and 2500-franc deductible models. 5928 of the insurance offers available in 2025 have been offered since 2015, making it possible for moneyland.ch to track the developments in the prices charged for these offers.

The results show that price changes for individual offers strongly deviate from the averages. The highest price increase for an individual mandatory health insurance offer over the past 10 years was more than 200 percent. The premiums for this offer have more than tripled, as Table 1 shows.

Taking the time to check how much your own insurance premium will go up in the coming year is worth it. “A mandatory health insurance offer may have been among the cheapest at the time that you got, but that does not mean it is still among the cheapest today,” explains moneyland.ch analyst Felix Oeschger.

The mandatory health insurance comparison on moneyland.ch includes a clear breakdown of year-on-year price developments for each individual health insurance offer. The breakdown includes the historical premiums since 2015, as long as the specific offer has been available since that year (as per the FOPH data bank).

The biggest premium increases over the past 10 years

The biggest price hike across all of the analyzes offers is 208 percent. It applies to adult residents in premium region three of the canton of Grisons who use the standard health insurance model from SLKK, with a 2500-franc deductible. The price of the same offer, but for residents of Grisons’ second premium region, went up by 204 percent. The third-biggest premium hike (202 percent) applies to the standard-model insurance offer from Assura for adult residents of Nidwalden, which also more than tripled in price.

Table 1: The biggest premium increases over the past 10 years

The biggest premium decreases over the past 10 years

There are also a few offers that have become cheaper since 2015, as Table 2 shows. For example, the price of the EGK Care family doctor offer for residents of Vaud has gone down by 4 to 14 percent, depending on the deductible and premium region.

Table 2: The biggest premium decreases over the past 10 years

Biggest and smallest price increases by premium region

moneyland.ch calculated the biggest percentual price changes over the past 10 years for the cantons of Basel Stadt and Geneva, and the primary premium regions (region 1) of the cantons of Bern, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Ticino, Vaud, and Zurich. The aim of the selection was to account for the premiums in all of Switzerland’s major regions. Here too, the analysis is based on premiums for adult residents aged 26 or older, without accident coverage, for both the lowest and highest possible insurance deductibles. The PDF shows the offers that experienced the biggest premium increases for each of these regions.

Table 3: Biggest premium increases for residents of Zurich city with a 2500-franc deductible

For adult residents of Zurich city with a 2500-franc deductible, the standard-model offer from Assura experienced the biggest price increase, at 108 percent. The premium for Assura’s family doctor offer climbed by 100 percent, and the premium for Atupri’s FlexCare offer climbed by 94 percent.

Table 4: Smallest premium increases for residents of Zurich city with a 2500-franc deductible

The offers for residents of Zurich city with a 2500-franc deductible that had the lowest price hikes were the ÖKK Casamed HMO (28 percent increase), followed by the Helsana Premed-24, Concordia MyDoc, and KPTwin.win offers, all of which increased by 27 percent).

Table 5: Biggest premium increases for residents of Geneva with a 2500-franc deductible

For adult residents of Zurich city with a 2500-franc deductible, the standard-model offer from Galenos experienced the biggest price hikes, with premiums going up by 99 percent. Next in line are the standard-model offers from Assura and Klug, which went up in price by 98 and 97 percent respectively.

Table 6: Smallest premium increases for residents of Geneva with a 2500-franc deductible

The offers with the lowest price hikes for adult residents of Geneva with a 2500-franc deductible are Sympany Casamed family doctor model, Sympany standard model, and EGK-Care. The premiums for these offers rose by around 12 and 11 percent respectively.

Residents who use the highest deductible are the hardest-hit

In percentages, the biggest price hikes were smaller for residents who use the lowest possible deductible (300 francs), as the moneyland.ch analysis shows. “Over the past decade, residents who use the highest possible deductible (2500 francs) were hit with the biggest percentual price increases,” observes moneyland.ch analyst Felix Oeschger.

A regulation that limits the maximum possible discount for using higher deductibles is likely one of the reasons that residents who use the highest deductible experienced bigger premium increases. The regulation stipulates that the maximum discount for choosing a higher deductible cannot exceed 70 percent of the additional risk. For example, if a resident moves from the lowest to the highest possible deductible, the discount that comes with the change may not exceed 1540 francs per year, or 128.35 francs per month. Effectively, that means that the higher the premiums for insurance with a 300-franc deductible climb, the smaller the discount for using a higher deductible can be.

More on this topic:
Compare Swiss mandatory health insurance offers now
Health insurance deductible calculator
Complete premium analysis (German PDF)