First, I want to express my gratitude for reintroducing this forum. This is my first post on behalf of a family friend who is recently relocated to Switzerland.
My family friend received a job offer in Basel and moved to Switzerland in 2023. She was working full-time while caring for her children alone. Her spouse visited her before applying for family reunification, but during the second week of his stay, he suffered a brain hemorrhage and was hospitalized for three weeks in the intensive care unit following surgery. Although he had travel insurance, the hospital required cash payment and an additional surety bond to cover all expenses, which she provided.
Once the treatment was completed, they received a final bill of 75,000 Swiss Francs, which is quite substantial. The travel insurance company was initially uncooperative, but after a lengthy legal battle, they agreed to pay only 30,000 Swiss Francs.
My question is whether there are any options for her to receive support for the remaining amount. She borrowed money to settle the bill, and managing this debt as a single income earner with children will take decades. Additionally, her husband lost his job due to this medical crisis.
Thank you for sharing any valuable information or experiences.
Such costs are normally mitigated through health insurance. Not sure where husband came from but perhaps costs are covered by private health insurance or some kind of reciprocal health insurance between countries?
This is a great idea. It may not be perfect, but reducing the taxable income already helps.
Just read about it and the deduction depends on the canton. Some cantons allow higher deductions, but the baseline is all costs above 5% of annual revenue can be deducted from taxable income. This is Bern, other cantons offer similar info
This is a very sad story. Unfortunately, they’ll look for any income/assets to cover her debts, before any social help could be granted. I hope they’ll stay strong and find a way out of this situation.
Probably last resort territory, but you could always set up a GoFundMe page and see if you can raise funds that way. Seems to be getting more and more popular for such dire straits.
Insurance companies like to pay out as little as possible and will often only cover initial life-saving treatment but not the vital follow-up work/recovery work.
I suspect, as your friend has got lawyers involved, and as you write in your post, they don’t need any help trying to recuperate any more from medical insurance as their lawyers would have (hopefully) explored all avenues.
As the patient (her spouse) has no legal connection with Switzerland, and the fact the bill has been paid via a loan, I can’t believe there is an organisation here which would reimburse your friend fully, or partially for the loan. This is effectively what you are asking for help with?
The only help they could possibly get is some sort of monetary help for financial hardship for themselves and their children but this is very likely to be dependent on their permit, their kanton and so on.
This honestly wouldn’t be a one-off payment to reimburse the loan or any other medical costs, if they were expecting that.
Going down the hardship route via their kanton would involve first selling off any assets and would really be down to how much money the family has at the end of the month to live on ignoring how many years would be needed to pay back the loan.
Again, it would probably dependent on Residence Permit type.
As far as I know this social help is granted only when someone cannot cover basic expenses - housing, food etc. They don’t care if you have to sell any of your assets, which you might consider indispensable. And you’ll have to go through a process - evaluated by a social worker etc. As a foreigner here (I think) this is the last thing you want.
In every residence permits form etc you have to fill in, there’s a section about benefitting from social aid. I mean, if they can avoid that…
I think many aspects are unclear with this story.
He arrived in Switzerland as a tourist? When did he exactly apply for family reunification? After hospitalization or before? Was he from a EU country? Has he got the residence permit now (is he now a resident or still a tourist?)
As a tourist, they could recoup costs via a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) and/or travel insurance, if from an EU/UK country. If he had already applied for family reunification and declared the day of arrival before he had the illness, the Swiss health system will cover part of the cost, as he would have been officially resident here.
Since the travel insurance paid 30k it seems he was indeed in the country as a tourist on the day of the hospitalization (they wouldn’t pay otherwise, it’s one of the first things they check with the authorities). But why didn’t they pay more? There must be more to the story.
As people said, if he is resident now, they can ask to complete a tax return (some cantons allow this, others don’t) and the expenses and debt may reduce a bit their tax burden. But is he a resident or still officially a tourist? (One of the requirements for family reunification is the ability of the worker to support all the members of the family, for someone with children struggling this may not be the case).
Since Swiss health insurance has to cover from the arrival date, it’s possible that Swiss health insurance can be backdated & cover this claim. There is no health underwriting for basic insurance, which is not basic at all.